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V 



THE WORLD'S EPOCH-MAKERS 



EDITED BY 

OLIPHANT SMEATON 



Descartes, Spinoza 

and the New Philosophy 

By James Iverach, M.A., D.D. 



The following Volume s in this Series are now Ready :— 

CRANMER AND THE ENGLISH REFORMATION. 

By A. D. INNES, M.A. 
WESLEY AND METHODISM. 

By F. J. Snell, M.A. 

LUTHER AND THE GERMAN REFORMATION. 
By Principal T. M. Lindsay, D.D. 

BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM. 

By Arthur Lillie. 

WILLIAM HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK. 

By James Sime, M.A., F.R.S.E. 
FRANCIS AND DOMINIC. 

By Prof. J. Herkless, D.D. 
SAVONAROLA. 

By Rev. G. M 'Hardy, D.D. 
ANSELM AND HIS WORK. 

By Rev. A. C. Welch, M.A., B.D. 

MUHAMMAD AND HIS POW 7 ER. 

By P. De Lacy Johnstone, M.A.(Oxon.) 

ORIGEN AND GREEK PATRISTIC THEOLOGY. 
By Rev. William Fairweather, M.A. 

THE MEDICI AND THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE. 

Bv Oliphant Smeaton, M.A. 
PLATO. 

By Prof. D. G. Ritchie, M.A., LL.D. 
PASCAL AND THE PORT ROYALISTS. 

By William Clark, LL.D., D.C.L. 

EUCLID: HIS LIFE AND SYSTEM. 

By Thomas Smith, D.D., LL.D. 

HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM. 

By Prof. R. Mackintosh, D. D. 

DAVID HUME and his Influence on Philosophy 
and Theology. By Prof. James Orr, D.D. 

ROUSSEAU and Naturalism in Life and Thought. 
By Prof. W. H. Hudson, M.A. 

DESCARTES, SPINOZA, and the New Philosophy. 
By Prof. James Iverach, D.D. 



THE WORLDS EPOCH-MAKERS 



Descartes, Spinoza 

and the New Philosophy 



By 



Tames Iverach, M.A., D.D. 

Professor of Apologetics and Christian Ethics in the United Free Church 

College, Aberdeen 

Author of "Is God Knonvable ?" " Christianity and Evolution " 

" Theism in the Light of Present Science and Philosophy " etc. 



New York. Charles Scribner's Sons 

1904 



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PREFACE 



The aim of the series of which this book is a part 
has prevented me from the discussion of many topics 
which might have been profitably treated, had more 
space been available. I felt, also, that each of the great 
thinkers treated in the book might have fitly claimed 
as large a space as that allotted to the two. There 
was therefore need for condensation, and for the laying 
of emphasis on the main thoughts of the systems, to the 
neglect of less important matters. I venture to hope 
that the great contributions of these great thinkers to 
the inheritance of the human race have been recog- 
nised in these pages. It has been necessary to neglect, 
almost altogether, the more theological part of Spinoza's 
writings, and the main part of his political philosophy. 
Those interested in Spinoza will find the political side 
of his philosophy set forth at length, with great learn- 
ing, and with lucidity and precision, in the work of 
Mr. Duff {Spinoza's Political and Ethical Philosophy, 
by Robert A. Duff, M.A. ; Maclehose, Glasgow), a book 
which came into my hands too late to be of service to 

me in the preparation of the present volume. 
b 



VI 



PREFACE 



The edition of the works of Descartes with which I 
have worked was printed at Amsterdam in 1663. It 
contains the chief works of Descartes: the Medita- 
tiones, with the Responsiones to the various objections ; 
the Epistola ad Voetium ; the Principia Philosophice ; 
the Dissertatio de Methodo ; and the Passiones Anirrwe. 
While the date on the title-page is 1663, some of the 
treatises bear the number of the year 1664. The 
edition of the Epistolce used by me is the Amsterdam 
one, printed in two volumes in 1682. The title-page 
says that some of these epistles were written by the 
author in Latin, and some in French, but these have 
been translated into Latin. It is not easy to remember 
all the books on Descartes and Cartesianism which I 
have read. I have obtained something from all of them. 
I have read the Histories of Philosophy. Ueberweg, 
Erdmann, Kuno Fischer, Windelband, and Hoffding 
have been read by me, and they help the student 
greatly in his endeavour to understand the historical 
conditions of the time of Descartes and Spinoza, and 
the part which these thinkers played in the develop- 
ment of human thought. I have used the translation 
of Professor Yeitch where it was available. The volume 
on Descartes in Blackwood's Philosophical Classics for 
English Readers, written by Professor Mahaffy, Dublin, 
I have found to be most helpful, especially in the bio- 
graphical part of it. Other works to which I am 
indebted are referred to, and my specific indebtedness 
is acknowledged in its proper place. 



PREFACE vii 

The edition of the works of Spinoza with which I 
have worked is the magnificent Bi-centenary Edition, 
edited by Van Vloten and Land. It is an edition which 
leaves nothing to be desired. Most of the literature 
connected with the bi-centenary celebration of Spinoza 
has been read by me. Much of it is of the ephemeral 
sort. But the books on Spinoza written by Principal 
Caird, Dr. Martineau, and in particular the great work 
of Sir Frederick Pollock, have an abiding value. To 
each of these I am deeply indebted Each of them 
has his own point of view, and each is disposed to in- 
terpret Spinoza in his own fashion, and, in particular, 
to criticise him from the point of view of his own 
philosophy ; yet there is in all of these writers, and in 
their writings, something impersonal and objective. 
These works are simply indispensable to the student 
of Spinoza. 

Another work which I have found most helpful is 
A Study of the Ethics of Spinoza, by Harold H. 
Joachim; Clarendon Press. It is a great work, but 
one not easy to read. Mr. Joachim has a non-conduct- 
ing style, yet he has something to say; and if the 
reader has to wrestle with the meaning, there is a 
worthy meaning to be obtained, and it is well worth 
the toil it costs to find it. The classical article on 
Cartesianism in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, by the 
Master of Balliol, is still one of the classics on the 
subject, and is as fresh and suggestive as ever. I have 
found many helpful and suggestive thoughts in the 



viii PREFACE 

references made to Spinoza and Descartes in Dr. Ward's 
Giftbrd Lectures, entitled Naturalism and Agnosticism. 

I ought also to refer to the work of the late Pro- 
fessor Adamson of Glasgow, edited by Professor Sorley. 
It is called The Development of Modern Philosophy. 
I regret that it did not come into my hands at an 
earlier period, but my book was nearly finished before 
I had the advantage of reading his most able exposi- 
tion of Descartes and Spinoza. To the work of Mr. 
Duff I have already referred. I have frequently used 
the translation of the Works of Spinoza, by Mr. R. H. 
M. Elwes, entitled "The Chief Works of Benedict Be 
Spinoza, Translated from the Latin, with an Introduc- 
tion by R. H. M. Elwes. In two Volumes. London : 
George Bell & Sons." It is a useful and competent 
work, and the English student of Spinoza will find it 
to be a great boon. 

It seemed necessary to write this short preface, 
mainly for the purpose of acknowledging my obliga- 
tions. There may be obligations which I have for- 
gotten, but what I am conscious of. I acknowledge. 



CONTENTS 



INTRODUCTION 

PAGK 

The Middle Ages — Their Attitude to History — Contrast between 
Greek and Latin Theology — The Mediaeval View of God, 
Man, and the World — Truth guaranteed by Authority — 
Results of that Attitude of Mind — The Problem of the New 
Philosophy — Inner Experience and the Church — Augustine — 
Certainty of Inner Experience, and its Function in the 
Middle Ages — Conflicting Tendencies — Aristotle — The Influence 
of Greek Literature — The Rise of Individualism — The Rise of 
the Historical Spirit — The Influence of Geographical and Scien- 
tific Discoveries — The New Knowledge — the Movement of 
Emancipation 1 

CHAPTER I 

The New Situation — The New Problems — The Problem of Existence 
— The Problem of Descartes — The Family of Descartes — His 
Birth — His Early Years — His Training — Study of Mathema- 
tics and Physics — His further Studies — His Military Life — The 
Crisis of his Life — Travels — Intercourse with Scientific Men — 
His Works— Residence in Sweden — His Death . . .21 



CHAPTER II 

Discontent of Descartes with the Knowledge of his Time — His 
Account of that Knowledge — His four Rules for Guidance — 
The Method of Mathematics — Analysis and Synthesis — Speci- 
men of Synthesis — Extension of Mathematical Method — The 
Question of Descartes and the Question of Kant — Nature and 



CONTENTS 



PAOK 

Limits of Human Knowledge — The Data of Intelligence — 
The two Methods — The Search for Certainty — Coyito, ergo 
sum — Clear and distinct Knowledge — Questions raised by 
■ :> <the Cartesian Philosophy, and the Answers to them . . 37 

CHAPTER III 

The Cogito, ergo sum — Its meaning for Descartes — What is Thought ? 
— Certainty of Intuitive Truth — Appeal to the Veracity of God 
— Need of such Appeal, in regard to Intuitive Truth and to the 
Perception of External Things — Space and Matter — Mind and 
Matter — Argument for the Existence of God — Dualism — Reality 
and Perfection — Objective Reality — The Lumen naturale — 
y Causality — The Place of the Conception of God in the Cartesian 

^ System 56 



CHAPTER IV 

The Steps of the Argument for the Existence of God — The Know- 
y ledge of Self gives the Knowledge of God — The Notion of the 
Infinite a Positive Notion — Reality not explicable from the 
notion of Contingent and Possible Existence — What the Con- 
ception of God is — Truth and Error — Understanding and Will 
— Final Cause rejected — Relation of God to Mind and to Matter 
— Cause and Effect — Reason and Consequent . . . .74 

CHAPTER V 

The Two Sides of the Cartesian Philosophy — Mechanism — Animal 
Automatism — Huxley — Soul and Body — Parallelism or Inter- 
action — Passion — Freedom — A Conscious Automaton — Sensa- 
tion and Passion — Teleology — Modern Forms of the Cartesian 
Doctrine— Dr. Ward 92 



/ 



CHAPTER VI 

Matter — Matter and Motion — Quantity of Motion — The First and 
Second Causes — Matter in abstraction from Mind — Matter 
and Extension — Professor Tait on Newton's Laws of Motion — 
Criteria of Objective Reality — Development of the Universe 
according to Natural Law — Mechanical Evolution — Conser- 
vation of Matter — Difficulties connected with the System — 
Fruitfulness of the main Mechanical Conceptions of Descartes 111 



CONTENTS xi 

CHAPTER VII 

PAGE 

Problems of the Cartesian Philosophy — The Place of Malebranche — 
Spinoza — His Personality — The Poetry of his System— His 
Character — His People — The Aim of his Philosophy — His Birth 
— His Training — The Influences which moulded him — Separa- 
tion from Judaism — Friends and Correspondents — Residence at 
Rhynsburg and at Amsterdam — His Works — His Manner of 
Life— His Death 130 

CHAPTER VIII 

De Intelledus Emendatione — The Search for a Method — The Rules 
of Method — True and adequate Ideas — Ideas and Abstractions 
— Definition — The Understanding — Properties of the Under- 
standing — General Laws — The Order and Connection of Ideas, 
and the Order and Connection of Things — Causality— Hume — 
Degrees of Knowledge — Perfect Knowledge . . . .149 

CHAPTER IX 

^/Exposition of Cartesian Philosophy — A Synthetic Exposition more 
Geametrico — Definitions — Axioms — Propositions — The Cogi- 
tatio Metaphysial — Ways of Thinking — The four Kinds of Being 
— Affections of Being — The Necessary, the Impossible, the 
Possible, and the Contingent — Freedom of the Will — Time 
and Eternity — Good and Evil — The Attributes of God — The 
Nature of Man . 167 

CHAPTER X 

The Ethics— The First Two Books— Substance— God— Proofs of the 
Existence of God — Their Validity — Exclusion of Ethical Con- 
ceptions from Reality — The Indeterminate — Determination — 
Power and Activity — Modes — Unity and Difference — Freedom 
and Self-determination — Degrees of Reality — Katura naturans 
and Natura naturata — Freedom — Teleology — Substance, Attri- 
butes, Mode— Dr. Ward on Teleology 186 

CHAPTER XI 

Application of the Principles of the System to the Life of Man — 
Reply to the charge of Atheism — Definitions — Res Cogitans et 



xii CONTENTS 

PAGE 

res extensa — The adequate Idea — Kant on the Question, How- 
Things are given us — A Science of Nature — Properties of 
Matter — Parallelism — Association of Ideas — Knowledge — The 
three Kinds of Knowledge — Sub specie ceternitatis — Will and 
Understanding — Will and Desire 205 

CHAPTER XII 

The last Three Books of the Ethics — The Conatus sese conservandi 
— Its Meaning and its Consequences — Pleasure and Pain — The 
Primary Emotions and their Derivatives — Description and 
Appreciation — Ethical Judgments illusive — Good — Utility — 
Timeless Causation — The vanishing of Emotion — Social Ethics 
—The State— The third Kind of Knowledge— The Intellectual 
Love of God— Immortality — Peace, Blessedness, and Virtue . 224 

Index 243 






DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND THE 
NEW PHILOSOPHY 



INTRODUCTION 

The Middle Ages — Their Attitude to History— Contrast between 
Greek and Latin Theology — The Mediaeval View of God, 
Man, and the World — Truth guaranteed by Authority — 
Results, of that Attitude of Mind — The Problem of the 
New Philosophy — Inner Experience and the Church — 
Augustine — Certainty of Inner Experience and its Function 
in the Middle Ages — Conflicting Tendencies — Aristotle — 
The Influence of Greek Literature — The Rise of Individualism 
— The Rise of the Historical Spirit — The Influence of 
Geographical and Scientific Discoveries — The New Know- 
ledge — The Movement of Emancipation. 

To understand the New Philosophy, and to have some 
measure of its significance, it is necessary to obtain 
some conception of the state of life and thought during 
the period of its preparation, and of the conditions 
which so far determined it. Some account, however 
brief, must be given of the thought of the Middle 
Ages if we are to understand the problem of Descartes, 
and the solution of it to which he came. For, how- 



2 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

ever great is his originality, lie was still a child of 
his time, and the culture of the past and the circum- 
stances of his time determined in a measure the 
questions asked by him, and the answers he was able 
to give them. It was a time of transition, when the 
old view of God, of man, and of the world could no 
longer satisfy the inquiring mind. Man's knowledge 
had suddenly widened. He had become aware of a 
culture and a mode of life different from his own, and 
the literature of Greece and the life of antiquity had 
been thrust upon him, and that knowledge had raised 
many questions which had a close bearing on his view 
of the world. 

As one reads in the literature of the Middle Ages, 
one is struck with the absence of any knowledge of 
any kind of culture and life save that which lay in 
the immediate present. There is hardly a reference to 
history, and the Middle Ages seem ignorant of the 
origin of the religion they professed and of the histor- 
ical and human conditions of its development. Such 
inquiries, if they ever occurred to any one, were sure 
to be discouraged by the Church, for the aim of the 
Church was ever to encourage faith in the divine 
origin and character of her claims. As much know- 
ledge as would harmonise with these claims was per- 
mitted, and no more. If one had time, an instructive 
contrast might be drawn between Greek and Latin 
theology, regarding the views set forth in them as to the 
relation between the Christian and the heathen worlds. 
Greek theology delighted to find points of contact 
between the highest Greek thought and Christian 
theology; for the Middle Ages an impassable chasm 
lay between the pagan and the Christian worlds. 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 3 

From the time of the separation of the Eastern and 
Western Churches there was little intercourse between 
them, and each proceeded on its own path of develop- 
ment. The Western Church and the Western nations 
were scarcely touched with any culture, and were 
little influenced by any outside forces. They unfolded 
their own dogmas ; the nations lived their life, fought 
their battles, and pursued their destinies, unaware of 
the fact that men had lived on the earth for a loner 
time, and had achieved something of worth during the 
past ages of the world. 

The system of the Roman Church and of the Roman 
world was bound up with a limited view of the world 
and with a partial view of man. Looking back at the 
course of development from the time of Augustine, the 
great teacher of the Western Church, to the time of the 
Renaissance, we observe that the content of ancient 
human achievement, which was alive and fruitful in 
the Middle Ages, was just as much of it as was 
embodied in the doctrines of the Christian Church, 
and approved of by ecclesiastical authority. No doubt 
there was much in the doctrines that could feed the 
human spirit, and fit it for a right kind of life. But 
the attitude of mind that questions, scrutinises, doubts, 
and longs for certainty, the spirit that seeks for truth 
and wants a rational guarantee for the truth of thought, 
was discouraged until it almost vanished. Truth was 
given — it was guaranteed by revelation and made sure 
by the authority of the Church ; the dogmas were not 
to be questioned; the whole duty of the inquirer 
consisted in showing the inner harmony and logical 
connection of the dogmas each to each, and to arrange 
them in a system. Here, too, was abundant work 



4 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

for ardent spirits ; and how great was the intellectual 
power exercised in this work, and how subtile were 
its speculations, are well known to the reader in 
scholastic philosophy. 

It is not necessary to regard the Middle Ages as a 
period of utter darkness, nor as a period conspicuous 
by the absence of the power of thought or of specu- 
lation. The thought of these times was a thought 
within limits. It was not a time when men allowed 
themselves to search for the foundations of their 
beliefs, nor to inquire into the validity of their funda- 
mental thoughts. The main strands of their thoughts 
were there, given to them; their truthfulness was 
guaranteed to them by the authority of the Church, 
and, for the most part, no one ever thought of ques- 
tioning their truth or validity. These dogmas might 
be of such a character as to startle human intelli- 
gence, they might in their essential nature be such as to 
pass the limits of human intelligence, but that fact was 
regarded as a testimony of the ineffable character of 
the source from which they flowed. It is evident that 
the habit of looking at truth as given, as a something 
to be implicitly accepted and believed, must be pro- 
ductive of a peculiar habit of mind. It will develop, 
on the one hand, great analytic keenness of thought 
in the unfolding of the contents of a thought or a 
dogma, the truth of which is accepted as unquestioned ; 
and, on the other hand, it will help to starve and 
paralyse all these aptitudes of the human mind which 
are fostered by synthetic work. In such circumstances 
knowledge tends to become merely verbal, and such 
was largely the wisdom of the Middle Ages. 

After all, perhaps, as a training-place for the human 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 5 

spirit at that stage of its development, no fitter school 
could be found than that of the Church, with her unity, 
her organisation, her teaching, and her authority. The 
limitations of her own culture, and the stern way in 
which all that was opposed to her life and doctrine 
was excluded, rendered her task of education more 
easy. The positive elements of truth in her creed, on 
which she strenuously insisted, were of great import- 
ance for her educative mission. It was of great 
importance for the young nations of the West and 
North to have impressed on them a sense of the unity 
lying at the basis of things, and of a unity of purpose 
running through the ages. They had lived in isolated 
particularism ; their thoughts of man and of the world 
and of God were such as to make it impossible for them 
to reach any oneness in any sphere. On the religious 
side polytheism had been their heritage from the past, 
and if they had ever had any glimpses of a divine unity 
these had been few and far between, limited to a few, 
and had been insufficient to raise them above the 
seeming multiplicity of the divine. To them the 
message of the Church, with its constant insistence 
on the divine oneness, was a revelation, and a deliver- 
ance. It is a gain to reach unity in any sphere of 
thought, and a gain of special significance to be able to 
think of the unseen as one, with all its phenomena in 
one hand, and ruled by one purpose. This gain was 
given to these young nations by the Church. It was 
an advantage, also, that it was given with unfaltering 
assurance of its truth; and the claim that this truth 
was one divinely guaranteed was of immense import- 
ance in making the people feel its truth, if they could 
not think it. 



6 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

It was given to them in a most authoritative way. 
There is a stage of human culture, both in the indi- 
vidual and in the race, during which truth can be best 
given and received in this authoritative fashion. Not 
a spirit of investigation, nor of questioning, nor of 
search, but a receptive spirit ready to receive what 
is taught, to understand it, and to arrange it in 
systematic order was the characteristic of the Church 
herself, and it was the characteristic of the training 
she gave to the peoples under her care. She had much 
to teach them in all spheres of human activity. As 
we have already said, she had a message about God 
and His relations to man and to the world which was 
more excellent than any they had ever heard of, or 
conceived. She had to tell them of life and duty, of 
the present and of the future, of sin and salvation, and, 
if she had not then conceived or understood the full 
meaning of her message, she was able to give them 
what would help to mould their character and shape 
their life, and guide them onwards to the fuller 
national life of the future. The most fruitful way of 
looking at the Middle Ages is this of regarding them 
as the time of the educating of the European peoples 
for their future destiny. Themselves altogether un- 
scientific, and only theological, the Middle Ages pre- 
pared the world for that modern view of the world 
with which science has made us familiar. The mono- 
theistic character of the creed of the Church laid stress 
on the fundamental thought, that there was only one 
cause of all things ; and that led to the further thought, 
that as there was only one cause so there was one 
method of working, and that all things were connected 
together according to law. The ongoing of the world 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 7 

must in some way correspond to the oneness of the 
cause. Thus the monotheistic creed contained within 
itself the notion of a world of order, a world ruled by 
law, and this is the fundamental postulate of science. 

It is not our purpose to trace the movements of 
thought in the Middle Ages, nor to dwell at length on 
the characteristics of that interesting and formative 
period. We desire simply to obtain such a view of 
them as will help us to understand the problem set 
to the new philosophy. It helps us to understand that 
problem when we recognise that all the knowledge 
which the Middle Ages thought they possessed rested 
on foundations that had never been looked at, on 
assumptions that had never been tested, and on pre- 
suppositions that had never been sifted. The material, 
also, which they were in possession of, as the subjects 
on which they were to philosophise, were most in- 
adequate. On this I shall speak a little later. At 
present I say only that almost all that we call the 
sciences was not at their command, and what they 
called science was for the most part erroneous. Yet 
what marvellous subtility of thought, what acuteness, 
what formal completeness of exposition meet us in the 
scholastic philosophy. A skill in drawing distinctions, 
a power of elaborating arguments, and a deftness in 
drawing conclusions from appropriate premises, meet 
us in their pages such as we scarcely meet anywhere 
else in the history of human thought. It is a pity, we 
sometimes think, that human faculty of so exquisite 
a sort should have been thus wasted. But were these 
powers wasted? Was the Greek effort spent in 
elaborating the mathematics of the conic sections 
wasted ? Verily, it was not. Nor was the scholastic 



8 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

effort wasted, though it produced so few measurable 
results. It was a discipline of the human mind, it 
was the preparation of the human mind, and helped 
to develop powers which could be profitably exercised 
in dealing with the material to be won by the scientific 
spirit in the ages to come. 

The critical ingenuity, the argumentative power, 
and the analytic skill perfected in dealing with the 
scanty material at the command of the Middle Ages 
were ready for the work of investigating precisely 
these presuppositions which had remained unquestioned 
by them. They were ready also for the purpose of 
co-ordinating, systematising, and of dealing generally 
with the larger fruits of human experience, as that 
experience was enriched by the gains won by scientific 
effort. The Middle Ages may be said to have trained 
the mind of man for the greater and successful effort of 
the modern time. 

But the service of the Middle Ages to the progress 
of humanity was not limited to the mere training of 
the mind of man in logical dexterity and precision. 
They had something which had no recognised place 
in ancient thought. They received from Augustine 
the two fundamental conceptions, which they elaborated 
in a remarkable way. One conception was the im- 
mediate certainty of inner experience, and the other 
was the conception of the Church. In his doctrine of 
the certainty of inner experience Augustine anticipated 
the method of Descartes. Doubt implied the existence 
of the doubter; for if I doubt, I know that I, the 
doubter, am. This was for Augustine the starting- 
point of all knowledge. He recurs to it again and 
again, and expositions of it occur frequently in his 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 9 

works. His second great doctrine was the conception 
of the Church, and in that doctrine there lay the germs 
of full-blown Hildebrandism. The unfolding of Aug- 
ustine's doctrine of the certainty of inner experience, 
along with the Christian estimate of the eternal worth 
of man, led the Middle Ages to make that advance on 
the thought of Greece which has only come to full 
fruition in the modern philosophical doctrine of per- 
sonality. The inner life of man was the absorbing 
interest of the Middle Ages, controlled only by the 
interests and the authority of the Church. Nor were 
these two tendencies always consistent with each other. 
The interests of the inner life must be consistent with 
the larger interests of the Universal Church. To the 
Greek the interest of the inner life was limited to its 
relation with the outer life of the world, and specially 
to the relation to the life of the State. But to the 
Middle Ages had come the conception of the Church 
with its far-reaching power, and its claims to control 
the life that now is, and that which is to come. No 
doubt the eternal fate of a man was determined by the 
character of the inner life. No doubt, also, the future 
depended on the growth of the inner life. While this 
conviction swayed the whole religious life of the Middle 
Ages, it was controlled by the other conviction that 
the inner life could nourish and grow only as it was 
fed, guided, and controlled by the larger life of the 
Catholic Church. The Church would not permit the 
inner life of man to grow after its own fashion. Hence 
the watchfulness of its attitude with regard to the 
mystic tendencies of the time. Mystic self-absorption 
tended to withdraw men from the control of the 
Church, and to give them a relation with the Divine 



io DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

not mediated by the Church, and consequently it was 
discouraged and, if necessary, condemned. Mysticism 
was allowed, but only so far as it was consistent with 
the interests of the Church. Still, the fact remained 
that, whether directly or indirectly, the human spirit 
believed that it had fellowship with the Divine, and 
that fellowship could only be maintained through the 
growth of the inward life. Inner experience led men 
to see that the spiritual world was as much a reality 
as the material world. 

Man grew accustomed to look at himself from an 
eternal point of view. He was able to place the rich 
contents of the inner life, enriched as it was by a great 
religious experience, over against the external world, 
and thus a way was prepared for a more thorough 
scrutiny of that larger world which would include in 
itself these aspects of reality. The stress laid on the 
reality of spiritual experience, and the emphasis laid on 
the continued existence of iJie man, were elements in 
the education of man of q«ifee\inique value. 

Just as in the inner life of experience regard was 
ever had to the authority of the Church, so in the 
development of mediaeval thought the Church had 
a ruling influence, and every tendency that seemed 
to oppose her doctrine was sternly repressed. It is 
not necessary to follow the course of development, nor 
to enter into the controversy between Nominalism and 
Realism, nor to take sides as to the primacy of the 
Will or the Intellect, nor to say anything as to the 
boundaries of the kingdoms of Nature and of Grace, 
on all of which a great deal was written in the Middle 
Ages. Nor need we look at the contests between Church 
and State as these were conducted in the nations of 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY n 

the West. Nor can we say anything on the ethical 
problems keenly agitated from time to time, which are 
not without interest and significance to-day. 

Something must be said, however, on the relation of 
the Church, with her beliefs and practice, to the world 
of nature, and how she dealt with the views of the 
world which came to her largely through the Arabian 
philosophy, and finally through the recovered works 
of Aristotle. It is curious to reflect on the position 
which Aristotle came to hold in the Catholic Church, 
and still holds. Of course, the teachings of Aristotle 
must be made to agree with the presuppositions of the 
Church. A study of the works of Aristotle, as we now 
have them, reveals the fact that it would need great 
ingenuity to reconcile them with the dogmas of the 
mediaeval Church. As a matter of fact, they were 
not reconciled. They are mostly side by side, and 
are not mediated at all. The monism of Aristotle 
becomes a dualism in the hands of the schoolmen. 
In fact, all along the line a criticism of the scholastic 
philosophy reveals the fact that there is a fundamental 
difference between the Aristotle of Greece and the 
Aristotle of the schools. But even the philosophy 
of the schools cannot be made consistent with itself, 
for what they take from Aristotle is in contradiction 
with their own presuppositions. But the scholastic 
philosophy had a rooted objection to any process of 
investigation which might lay bare the foundations 
on which the edifice of their thought was built up. 

The principles borrowed from Aristotle, even as 
modified by the scholastic philosophy, contained ele- 
ments which in the long run were certain to exercise 
a disruptive influence on the composite structure. The 



12 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

explosion was destined to be all the more destructive 
the longer it was postponed. It came at last, and it 
was all the wider in its range because the principle of 
authority itself was involved in the crisis. If a system 
based on authority is ever questioned, and if men are 
driven to doubt the sufficiency and adequacy of the 
system, it is not the system alone that is overthrown ; 
the principle of authority also is likely to be ques- 
tioned. This was the result as regards the system 
of mediaeval thought, which ceased to commend itself 
to many peoples because of the movement we call by 
the names of the Renaissance and the Reformation. 
The Church had debarred men from any investigations 
of her presuppositions. It committed itself to the truth 
of the system. It is perilous to the very interests of 
authority to commit itself to propositions open to ques- 
tion. Authority has often tried to stop the process of 
investigation, and it has always failed, and deserved to 
fail. No doubt authority has its legitimate sphere of 
influence, but it has no place in the ordered process 
of human knowledge, nor any right to step in between 
human knowledge and its goal. 

Human knowledge increased by leaps and bounds, 
and every increase of knowledge made the rupture 
with scholasticism more inevitable. The scholastic 
philosophy contained in itself the seeds of its own 
dissolution, as the history of it abundantly proves. 
But the internal incompatibilities in its system of 
thought become more clear when the pressure of the 
new knowledge began to tell on it. The philosophy 
of the Middle Ages was not flexible enough to receive 
the new ferment which aroused the minds of men 
when they began to study the works of Greek thinkers 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 13 

which were rediscovered in the fifteenth century. A 
new stream of culture flowed from Byzantium, and, 
reaching Florence and Rome, speedily reached Ger- 
many, France, and England, and wherever it appeared 
it called forth a spirit of opposition to scholasticism. 
The knowledge of Greek at first hand caused students 
to be resolutely opposed to the mediaeval interpre- 
tation of Greek philosophy; a knowledge of Greek 
method, with its criticism, made them impatient of 
a method of deduction from assumptions unverified, 
unsifted, and uncriticised, received from mere authority. 
The living beauty of Greek literature made men tired 
of the pedantic stiffness of monastic thought. In 
fact, in all departments of human thought, the restored 
Greek literature was like new wine with the proverbial 
influence on old bottles. 

Still more, the quickening effect of that great liter- 
ature was not limited to the effort to assimilate and to 
understand it. It quickened the minds of men, filled 
them with curiosity, and made them look at themselves 
and the world with new eyes. What is the world? 
and what is man ? and what is man's position in the 
cosmos ? Questions these which had an answer in the 
mediaeval system, but these answers were soon found 
to be inadequate. Man began to discover himself, and 
began to claim the right to live his own life, to think 
his own thought, to work out his own systems, and 
work them out to their inevitable conclusions. The 
Church had claimed to rule the world, and to bind 
men. She gave them truth infallibly guaranteed, and 
human effort ought to be directed only towards its 
assimilation. But the Renaissance started from another 
presupposition. Man, the individual, sprang into view, 



14 



DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 



— man, in his immeasurable natural freedom, who had 
the right to live, and to live according to nature. So 
the Renaissance loved to dwell on man, his greatness, 
his glory, his genius, and his power. It had all the 
strength of a reaction against the repressive power 
of medievalism, and all the riotous energy of being, 
freshly emancipated, and drunk with the sense of 
freedom and of power. It was the apotheosis of the 
natural man. It was, no doubt, extravagant, one-sided, 
and exaggerated; but it vindicated, once for all, the 
right of the individual to use his own eyes, to look at 
himself and the world for himself, and to face the 
problems of existence for himself. Happily, it is not 
necessary for our purpose to characterise the Renais- 
sance, nor to appraise its achievement. It is done to 
our hands by many writers, so well known that we 
do not require to name them. The Renaissance is the 
first step towards the discovery of the individual, and 
when the individual is discovered we have taken the 
first and necessary step towards a discovery of society 
— a discovery which is yet to come. 

The movement went on for some time before it 
became conscious of itself and its tendency. It was 
only by slow degrees that the Church became con- 
scious of the fundamental opposition between her 
system and the new learning. Many things helped 
to prolong this period of unconsciousness. Many of 
high standing in the Church had drunk deeply of the 
spirit of the Renaissance. Further, many in the Church 
did not take the Church and her system seriously, and 
it took some time to bring the opposition into clear 
consciousness. It was in the domain of nature know- 
ledge that the opposition became clear to both parties. 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 15 

Once realised at any point, it soon became apparent 
that the new view of the world was opposed to the 
old at every point where they touched. To the Re- 
naissance, history and a view of history as a real 
process in the world became possible. There was a 
life beyond the horizon drawn by the Church. As 
they studied the literature of Greece the men of the 
Renaissance felt that they had relations not only to 
the present ; they were closely akin to the peoples of 
antiquity. To the Renaissance we owe the first be- 
ginning of the historical view of the world, which is 
the leading view of the science and philosophy of our 
time. 

Along with the discovery of the history of the world 
in time went the discovery of the world in space. Men 
came to have a more adequate knowledge of the world 
in which they lived. Geographical knowledge had 
greatly widened. Through the Crusades, through the 
travels of such men as Marco Polo, through the dis- 
covery of America, through the discovery of the route 
to India by the Cape of Good Hope, and in other ways, 
man came to have a juster conception of the form of 
the world in which he lived. It was difficult to recon- 
cile the larger geographical view of the earth with 
that which had been the authoritative teaching. But 
the issue was not clear. The new knowledge might be 
regarded as an extension of the old, and it was not felt 
to be in contradiction with it. But the issue became 
clear when the cosmical position of the earth, and its 
place and position among the other bodies in the 
cosmos, became a matter of knowledge. It was possible 
to widen the mediaeval view of history and to find a 
place in it for the human race. It was also possible 



1 6 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

to extend the geographical view so as to include the 
various seas and continents of the earth, without 
flagrant contradiction of the received view. But the 
geocentric and the heliocentric views of the earth could 
not be reconciled. 

The naive view of the universe, as it appears to sense, 
placed the earth in the centre of the sphere, and made 
the planets revolve round it in circles. Not to touch 
on the systems set forth in ancient Greek thought, the 
Aristotelian theory of the world was based on the 
geocentric conception of the earth, and on the doctrine 
of the spheres. So great was the influence of the latter 
on human thought that even yet we hear of " the music 
of the spheres." The final form of the ancient theory 
is found in the work of the astronomer Ptolemy, 
elaborated in the second century of the Christian era. 
Into the particulars of the theory it is not necessary 
to enter. It suffices to say that the fundamental 
presupposition is, that the planets move round the 
earth, and that the earth is the centre of the universe. 
On this view it was gradually found impossible to make 
the facts square with the theory. New and more com- 
plex hypotheses were evolved to account for the facts ; 
epicycles were heaped on epicycles until all thoughts of 
simplicity were lost, and it began to dawn on the people's 
mind that they were on a wrong track. Step by step 
a new conception took the place of the old ; one step 
was taken by Tycho de Brahe and a greater step was 
taken by Copernicus, and the edifice was crowned by 
Newton, who was able to state in simple form the law 
that matter attracts directly as the masses, and inversely 
as the square of the distance. Newton was able to 
prove that the movements of the planets were con- 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 17 

sequences of the law of gravitation. Nor should the 
name of Kepler be omitted from the list of those who, 
in this field, widened the bounds of human know- 
ledge, and enabled men to have a view of the unity of 
the physical universe. It was a great work that was 
done in the sphere of astronomy. For it shows us the 
human mind going back on its earliest and most in- 
veterate preconceptions, submitting them to a critical 
examination, and discarding them as delusions because 
they had ceased to give a true and adequate interpreta- 
tion of experience. It is no wonder that Kant rejoiced 
to compare his own critical method with the method of 
Copernicus. The abiding lesson for thought is, that 
thought to be fruitful must reflect not only on its 
objects, but also on its own point of view, and must 
be prepared to criticise at frequent intervals its own 
procedure. 

The bearing of this on the theory of the universe 
held and upheld by the Church was soon manifest. 
The dogmatic authority of the Church was involved in 
the maintenance of the mediaeval view of the world. 
It had on its side the witness of the senses and the 
authority of antiquity. The teaching of the Church 
was identified in the closest manner with the system 
of Aristotle and with the Ptolemaic astronomy. Nay 
more, it seemed to have the authority of Scripture. 
" The two fit each other as scene and action : the earth, 
the centre of the world ; the appearance of God on the 
earth ; the Church, the Ci vitas Dei on earth, the centre 
of humanity ; hell under the earth, heaven above it ; 
the damned in hell, the saved in heaven beyond the 
stars, where the orders of the heavenly hierarchy 
ascend to the throne of God. The whole structure of 



1 8 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

limited and local conceptions totters and tumbles as 
soon as the earth ceases to be the centre of the universe 
and heaven its dome " (Kuno Fischer, Descartes and 
his School, Eng. trans, p. 133). 

Thus the opposition between the ecclesiastical and 
the Copernican systems was complete and thorough- 
going. As time went on and the new science grew 
from more to more, men on both sides became conscious 
of the breach. Yet, when one thinks of it, it was not 
a conflict between faith and knowledge, or between 
religion and science : it was a conflict between science 
proven inadequate, grown old and feeble, and science 
in its fresh youth and vigour. The pity of it was that 
the ecclesiastical system clung to that which was 
superannuated and treated it as of authority, and 
committed to it the issues of the present and the 
future. An untenable position was maintained by 
methods which might have a temporary success, with 
more fatal consequences in the time to come. 

Of greater importance than the discoveries which 
had been made, and the wider knowledge which had 
been won, was the awakening of the human spirit, and 
the claim it made to look at itself and at the world 
apart from presuppositions, and with the strenuous 
determination to see self and the world really as they 
were. This is the very spirit of the New Philosophy. 
It did not begin with Descartes, though he was one of 
its chief exponents. It was present in the humanists ; 
it ruled in Copernicus, Galileo, and the other precursors 
of the New Philosophy. There is no more interesting 
chapter in human history than this of the awakening 
of the human spirit to the greatness of man and the 
magnificence of the world. The ecclesiastical authority 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 19 

was powerless to stem the rising tide. Science and 
philosophy claimed their rights, and in the long run 
they won the victory. If they won it at the expense 
of ecclesiastical authority, in the mediaeval conception of 
it, they won it also to the lasting gain of real religion fr 
and true theology. 

The right to look at the self and world apart from 
the presuppositions of the ruling system must soon be 
inevitably claimed also in the sphere of religion. The 
great deliverance was the work of religion. For the 
most part the great leaders in Humanism and in Science 
were content to let the ecclesiastical system alone. 
They were engrossed with their own work, and scarcely 
realised that they were in opposition to the system of 
the Church. The religion of the Middle Ages was to 
believe what the Church taught, to worship in the 
forms prescribed by the Church, and to obey what the 
Church commanded. But the movement of the human 
spirit, which in the sphere of thought had set it so far 
free from ecclesiastical dominion, soon penetrated into 
the sphere of religion, and with consequences of a 
revolutionary character. As in science men claimed to 
look at the world and at man apart from the pre- 
suppositions of the time, so in religion the claims to 
have direct access to God in Christ became urgent. 
Man claimed the right to salvation, and in the fact of 
justification by faith in Christ alone they found the 
truth which they needed. The Reformation returned 
to the sources of Christian faith and doctrine, and the 
reformers believed that they found in the Scriptures 
that help and guidance which the humanists had 
found in the new view of man and of the world. We 
do not dwell on this, the religious aspect of the great 



20 THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

movement. We refer to it, as the Renaissance and the 
Reformation are parts of that great movement of 
emancipation by which man passed into a new world, 
in which a larger life became possible, and more 
adequate conceptions of God, man, and the world 
became possible. Great movements affect all spheres 
of human thought and life, and the account of any 
aspect of them is inadequate if it is not conscious that 
no aspect can be understood by itself. Our present 
business is, however, not with the Reformation, but 
with the New Philosophy. After a long preparation, 
and after many precursors, the hour is come, and the 
man : the man who is to embody the spirit of the age, 
and in whom the spirit of the age is to come to a clear 
consciousness of itself. 



CHAPTER I 

The New Situation — The New Problems — The Problem of 
Existence — The Problem of Descartes — The Family of 
Descartes — His Birth — His Early Years — His Training — 
Study of Mathematics and Physics — His further Studies — 
His Military Life — The Crisis of his Life — Travels — Inter- 
course with Scientific Men — His "Works — Kesidence in 
Sweden — His Death. 

A NEW view of the world had been won, and new 
scientific knowledge had come in with a flood, and it 
was necessary to work these into a systematic form and 
to co-ordinate them with the truths which seemed to 
consciousness to be sure, clear, and indisputable; for 
the need of a system to replace the scholastic system, 
now fallen into disrepute, was felt to be obvious. The 
desire for a system, the longing for a principle, assured 
and certain, from which all else would flow as con- 
clusions from premises, was itself a proof that the 
victory over scholasticism was not yet complete. But 
with the endeavour after a system there went a state- 
ment of problems, the solutions of which make up 
the history of modern philosophy. The problem of 
existence comes first into view, and along with it the 
problem of knowledge. As the new science had set 
forth the mechanical explanation of nature, so it had 

thrust into the foreground the problem of the relation 

21 



22 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

between the physical and the mental. Is the mechanical 
explanation adequate ? or, is there room for the 
teleological as well ? 

All these problems and many others are raised in the 
works of Descartes. He belonged to a noble family in 
Touraine, a family which had attained to some promi- 
nence, and had done some service to the State. His 
grandfather had served in war, his father had been a 
counsellor of Parliament at Rennes. Some of his 
relatives had risen to a high position in the Church. 
In the character and circumstances of his family there 
w T as nothing to excite that spirit of inquiry, or that 
tendency to doubt and question every accepted opinion, 
which was one of the characteristics of Descartes. 
Rather, the easy circumstances and the opportunity of 
a useful and honourable career open to him, as it 
w r as to all the loyal nobility, might have predisposed 
Descartes to adhere to the established order of things. 
In fact, the members of his family did not approve of 
him, and his brother regarded him with contempt, even 
after his name was famous throughout Europe. 

Rene Descartes was born 31st March 1596. His 
mother died a few days after his birth. From her 
he inherited a weak constitution and a tendency to 
consumption, the disease of which she had died. That 
he survived the weakness of infancy and attained to 
some measure of strength was owdng to the tenderness 
and skill of a devoted nurse, w-hom Descartes ever held 
in grateful remembrance. He was treated, owing to 
his delicate health, with the greatest indulgence. 
Mental exertion was discouraged, and he was only 
allowed to play at lessons. His desire for knowledge 
was very strong, and his acuteness was so great that 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 23 

his father was wont to call him his little philo- 
sopher. At the beginning of the year 1604 he was 
sent to the Jesuit College at La Fleche, recently 
founded by Henry iv. There he studied physics and 
philosophy according to the scholastic method. Mathe- 
matics was, however, his favourite study, and he 
seems soon to have made such progress as to have 
passed beyond the range of mathematical attainment 
of the time, and to be on the way towards the discovery 
of the principles of analytical geometry — the application 
of algebra to geometry. 

The school owed its existence to the munificence of 
King Henry iv., who gave to the Jesuit order the 
palace of La Fleche, and endowed it with royal 
magnificence. A hundred of the youth of the French 
nobility were to be educated in it, and trained by the 
Jesuit fathers. Among the first pupils was Descartes, 
and he remained there till he had finished his course, 
which he did in his seventeenth year. Descartes was 
an eager, loyal, and ardent student. He easily mastered 
the studies taught in the school, and indeed passed 
beyond them. Those studies began with the ancient 
languages, then a two years' course in philosophy, 
comprising a course in logic and ethics, and a course in 
physics and metaphysics. The effect of these studies 
on the mind of Descartes, taught as they were then, 
was to make him question the assumptions on which 
the systems were based, and to criticise them out and 
out. They failed to satisfy his ardent desire for know- 
ledge, and they provoked that doubt which, so far, 
set him free from the scholastic method and system. 
Mathematics was the only study that satisfied him. 
The certainty of its data and the demonstrative assur- 



24 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

ance of its sequence spurred him on to further study. 
His aim even then was to attain to certainty, clearness, 
and distinctness of knowledge. What influence mathe- 
matics had on his thought, and through him on 
philosophy, will be apparent as we proceed. We shall 
quote his own account of his state of mind at the end 
of his course in school when we seek to describe his 
method. 

In August 1612 he left school. "I," he says, "com- 
pletely abandoned the study of books as soon as my 
age permitted me to leave the subordinate position of 
a scholar, and I resolved no longer to study any other 
science than that which I could find in myself or in 
the great book of the world." With this resolve firmly 
fixed in his mind he left school, and entered on the 
period of life in the world and as a soldier. He was 
intended for the army, but as he was far from strong 
he stayed for some time at Rennes, where he practised 
riding and fencing to strengthen himself and to pre- 
pare himself for his future calling. Then for a time he 
went to Paris, and plunged into the excitement of city 
life. But the tendency towards scientific study con- 
tinued to dominate him, and suddenly he left com- 
panions and friends and lived for two years in a quiet 
lodging in St. Germain, hidden from friends and family. 
During this period of seclusion he was prosecuting his 
mathematical studies. Occupied in his mathematical 
studies, the stream of human events flowed on un- 
observed by him. The last States - General of the 
kingdom might meet and cease to meet, power might 
pass from the queen- mother to the king, the tendency 
which was to issue in the great event of 1789 might 
be set in action, but, absorbed in mathematics, Descartes 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 25 

was unconscious of those movements. Drawn from his 
retirement by one of his friends, he resolved to see 
other phases of life than those which were open to 
him in Paris. He went to the Netherlands and entered 
into the Dutch service, under Prince Maurice of Nassau, 
then the foremost military school of the time. Even 
in the military camp at Breda he found leisure to 
attend to his favourite pursuits. He was still occupied 
with mathematics, and was interested in the mathe- 
matical problems which were posted on the walls, 
challenging any one for a solution. Not understanding 
the language, Descartes asked a bystander to translate 
the problem into Latin or French. On the second day 
he brought back the solution, and this was the beginning 
of intercourse with Beeckmann. 

During his residence at Breda the controversy be- 
tween Calvinist and Arminian grew to its height, a 
controversy which had echoes far and wide, and seems 
to have been as unnoticed by Descartes as were the 
contemporary events in France. Absorbed though he 
was in study, he yet felt that it was needful for him to 
become acquainted with the world of men. He desired 
to be an actor, and to feel the experience which action 
alone can give. In the camp of Breda scientific studies 
were so absorbing that they threw the active life into 
the background ; he resolved to pass into a sphere in 
which the call to action would be irresistible. He 
went to Germany, then at the beginning of the Thirty 
Years' War. The great religious conflict which began 
with the Reformation was to be definitely fought out. 
An emperor had come to the throne who made it his 
life-work to stamp out the reformed religion. Beginning 
with a war for the possession of Bohemia, it passed 



26 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

into a war for the existence of Protestantism. The 
interest of Descartes did not lie in the war as a war, 
nor did he enter into the large interests involved in 
that great conflict : it was valuable to him as a school 
of experience, as a storehouse of material for subsequent 
reflection. He served in the Bavarian army for a 
time, and subsequently in the imperial army. But the 
most significant event of the time for Descartes did 
not lie in the clash of arms, nor in the battles lost and 
won ; it lay in the crisis through which he passed 
while he was in winter-quarters at Neuberg, on the 
Danube, in the winter of 1619-20. This was nothing 
less than the discovery of the method which guided 
him in all his work, mathematical and philosophical. 
Mathematics alone seemed to him to give certain 
knowledge. If he could find a method the application 
of which would give him the same sense of certainty in 
dealing with other sciences, he would be satisfied. For 
years he sought for this, and at length he believed he 
had found it. Of his exultation of spirit when he had 
the key of knowledge in his hand, and of his method 
itself, we shall read when we read his works. His 
works are rich in biographical interest. For him the 
events of life are his discoveries, particularly the 
discovery of his method, and his application of it, as 
he thought, to the sciences and to philosophy. 

Some eight months after the great mental crisis 
through which he had passed he left Hungary, and his 
military career ended. He did not return immediately 
to Paris, but travelled through Moravia and Silesia, 
spent some time in Brandenburg and Pomerania, and 
finally passed by sea from Emden to Holland. It was 
his first visit to Holland, the place where he was to 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 27 

dwell so long. In March 1622 lie returned to France. 
He went to Kennes to visit his father, who then put 
him in possession of his share of his mother's property. 
His inheritance was sufficient for him to live indepen- 
dently, and to set him free from that anxiety which 
has so often paralysed the best efforts of less fortunate 
men. He made no long stay at Rennes, as in February 
1623 we find him in Paris. After a stay of two months 
there he returned to Rennes, and shortly set out on a 
journey to Italy. On passing the Alps he made some 
scientific observations, passed on to Innspriick, and 
thence to Venice, where he witnessed the marriage 
of a new Doge with the Adriatic. He made a pilgrim- 
age to Loretto. He visited Rome, Florence, and, after 
witnessing the siege of Gavi, he returned by the valley 
of Susa and Piedmont to France, and resolved to settle 
for a time in Paris. In Paris he could find that 
scientific society which was the only sort of society 
in which he could find pleasure and satisfaction. He 
resided in Paris from the end of the year 1625 to the 
year 1628, interrupted only by an occasional visit to 
his relatives. He was present also at the famous 
siege of Rochelle, and during a truce visited the 
English fleet. 

During this period Descartes made the acquaintance 
of many of those scientific men with whom he corre- 
sponded in subsequent years, and renewed his inter- 
course with old friends. Hardy, De Beaune, Morin, 
Desargues, Balzac, and others were among his friends, 
with whom he had much friendly and stimulating 
intercourse. His old friends Mersenne and Mydorge, 
then engaged in optical studies, were the means of 
directing his attention to those studies which eventu- 



28 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

ally led to the writing of his Dioptrics. He gradually 
became the focus of a number of appreciative friends, 
and in his intercourse with them he gave the first 
expression to those thoughts which he had worked 
out in solitude and toil. His friends, surprised at 
their profundity and lucidity, urged him to publish 
them. He, however, preferred to brood over them 
still longer, and to wait for their further ripening. 
Some interesting stories regarding the triumph of his 
method belong to this period, but they are so familiar 
that we need not quote them. 

The period of his wanderings had come to an end. 
rleJiagLxnade trial-oLall the knowledge of his time, 
he h ad see n the world, had visited many lands and 
many cities, and he had studied their thoughts and 
their opinions. He was able to detect the errors in 
commonly accepted beliefs, and his attitude towards 
almost all the beliefs of men was that of doubt and 
criticism. He was sceptical of all except mathematical 
knowledge. True, he had seemed to see that the mathe- 
matical method, or a method of similar stringency, 
could be applied to all knowledge, but the real work 
was yet to be done. He had made himself a master of 
the method which led to the detection of error ; could he 
make himself master of a method which would lead to 
the discovery of truth ? He remained silent about his 
travels, said nothing regarding his varied experiences 
\ in many lands ; these were only valuable in so far as 
I they had widened his experience of the ways and 
\ thoughts of men. They simply drove him back to 
Iface these unanswered questions which he saw lying 
at the foundations of all knowledge. These had 
always pressed on him since he began to reflect, and 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 29 

they now returned with greater insistence than ever. 
He must be alone, and undisturbed even by his friends, 
in order to think them out. He was a living man 
himself, with a wide experience of life ; surely he might 
take himself as a representative man, subject himself 
and his thoughts to a searching investigation that took 
nothing for granted, that subjected everything to a 
doubt that did not falter ; thus he might hope to reach 
those principles which, like mathematical axioms, might 
be supposed to lie at the foundation of all knowledge. 
For this, however, a place was needed where he could 
be free from interruptions. 

He sought for a place which had a climate suitable 
for him and his work, and in which he might be as 
solitary as he pleased. He thought that he could not 
find these conditions in France, he believed that both 
could be found in Holland. In the spring of 1629 he 
went to Holland. So resolved was he to free himself 
from the possibility of interruptions that he took leave 
of his family by letter, and bade a personal farewell to 
only a few of his Parisian friends. One friend attended 
to the business affairs of Descartes, another looked 
after his literary affairs, and he jealously guarded his 
precious leisure from every one else. He frequently 
changed his abode, and habitually sought out for his 
residence the least frequented places. During the 
twenty years of his residence in Holland he changed 
his habitation twenty-four times, so determined was he 
to be master of his time and of his work. With occa- 
sional returns to society, which for a time he could 
thoroughly enjoy, he returned with increased zest to 
his solitude and his work. It was thus that he 
thought out and brought to literary form these works 



30 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

which have set those problems to philosophy, the solu- 
tions of which have occupied philosophic thought from 
that day to this ! and so became the founder of modern 
philosophy. 

It is not necessary, and would indeed be tedious, to 
enumerate the places where Descartes resided during 
the twenty years of his sojourn in Holland. For the 
most part the events of interest to him were not those 
that happened in the world, but those which culminated 
in the working out of his thought, its reduction into 
literary form, and the publication of his works. The 
subjects at which he worked were of immense range 
and of abounding and permanent interest. The first 
effort resulted in the sketch of the Meditations, which 
was completed in the year 1629. He then set himself 
to the preparation of a comprehensive work, in which 
there would be a systematic explanation of the world 
according to his new principles. His first aim was to 
discover a method whereby real and progressive know- 
ledge might be won by man. By the use of this 
method he hoped to arrive at a true metaphysic, and 
by the further application of it to reach true and 
adequate conceptions of man and the world. But the 
order of his discovery was not the order of their 
publication. Assuming the truth of his method and 
principles, he set himself to their application, and if the 
application of them were accepted he believed the way 
would be prepared for a favourable consideration of the 
method and principles themselves. With this view he 
gave himself to the preparation of the treatise on the 
Cosmos. In the main assumption, which lies at the 
basis of his system, he so far anticipated the nebular 
theory with which are associated the names of Kant 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 31 

and Laplace. A homogeneous matter, with only the 
qualities of extension and mobility, and from these 
the phenomena of the world are to be deduced. A 
fixed quantity of matter, and a constant quantity of 
motion being given, then from these data the world 
can be explained. He laboured at the work and got 
it into literary shape, but he did not publish it. As he 
was about to publish it he heard of Galileo's book 
on the same subject, and he learned of the com- 
motion which that book had caused, and it gave him 
pause. He heard that the doctrine of the motion 
of the earth round the sun had been condemned, and 
that Galileo had been somewhat roughly dealt with by 
the Holy Office. Some time after he received from 
Beeckmann a copy of Galileo's book, and finding in it 
many positions identical with his own, he was at a loss 
what to do. Having learned that the doctrine of the 
motion of the earth was not tolerated, he saw that 
if he was to publish his work he would bring himself 
under the condemnation of the Church. "I am like 
wicked debtors," he wrote to Mersenne, November 28, 
1633, "who are always asking their creditors for more 
time, as soon as they see the day for payment drawing 
near. I had really intended to send you my Cosmos as 
a New Year's present ; and about two weeks ago I was 
entirely resolved to send a part of it to you, if the 
whole should not be then copied. But I have just been 
inquiring in Leyden and Amsterdam whether Galileo's 
system of the universe can be there found, since I 
thought I had heard that it had been published in 
Italy the previous year. I am now informed that it 
was certainly printed, but that every copy of it was 
immediately burnt at Rome, and that Galileo himself 



32 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

was sentenced to do penance. This has so strangely 
affected me that I have almost resolved to burn all my 
manuscript, or at least to show it to no one. And I am 
the more inclined to this resolution, because it at once 
occurs to me that Galileo, who is an Italian and, as I 
am informed, has been in favour with the Pope, is 
charged with no other crime than this doctrine of the 
motion of the earth, which, as I know, some cardinals 
had before pronounced heretical. But in spite of it, if 
my information is correct, it has continued to be pro- 
pagated in Rome ; and I confess, if it is false, all the 
principles of my philosophy are erroneous, since they 
mutually support each other ; and it is so closely con- 
nected with all the parts of my work that I cannot 
leave it out without fatally injuring the rest. But on 
no account will I publish anything that might displease 
the Church, and I will rather suppress it altogether 
than allow it to appear in a mutilated condition " 
(quoted in Kuno Fischer's Descartes, pp. 231, 232). 
Descartes was not made of the stuff of which martyrs 
were made. He was afraid of opposition, specially of 
opposition proceeding from quarters that had the power 
and the will to make him uncomfortable. It was open 
to him to keep his book secret, but he did not altogether 
take the course. He did not keep the secret, he pub- 
lished his conclusions in a form which might possibly 
be distinguished from the form which had been con- 
demned. " In words," he says, " I deny the motion of the 
earth, while in reality I defend the system of Coper- 
nicus." The peculiar example of Descartes, himself a 
pupil of the Jesuits, was followed by the Jesuit editors 
of Newton's Principia. The Declaratio of PP. Le Seur 
et Jacquier, prefixed to the second volume of the 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 33 

Jesuit edition of the Principia is as follows : " New- 
tonus in hoc tertio Libro Telluris motse hypothesim 
assumit. Autoris Propositiones aliter explicari non 
poterant, nisi eadem quoque facta hypothesi. Hinc 
alienum coacti sumus gerere personam. Caeterum latis 
a summis Pontificibus contra telluris motum Decretis 
nos obsequi profitemur." On the dexterity of this 
movement we make no remark. Authoritative de- 
cisions of an infallible authority have their inconveni- 
ences. Nor shall we make any remark on the timidity 
of Descartes, or on the compromise to which he came. 

Having for these reasons resolved not to publish the 
Cosmos in the form in which he had prepared it, he 
turned to other work. But we do not propose to 
describe the preparation of his successive works or 
the order of their publication. The first work of his 
published is the Discourse on Method, or, to give the 
title in full, Discourse on the Method of rightly 
guiding the Reason in the investigating of Truth in 
the Sciences; the Dioptrics, and the Meteors. The 
book did not attract much attention. In fact, it was 
not till the Meditations were published that the world 
awoke to the fact that a thinker of the first magnitude 
had appeared on it. In the Discourse he had already 
revealed the main principles of his philosophy, and had 
discussed the necessity of universal doubt, the principle 
of certainty, the criterion of knowledge, the existence 
of God and of the soul. But these principles had only 
been stated ; they required to be unfolded, elucidated, 
and established. He had thought out his system, and, 
in fact, the main ideas of his philosophy were widely 
known before they appeared in print. He had talked 
about them frequently with his friends in Paris and in 
3 



34 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

Holland ; many had been attracted by these ideas and 
had talked about them in their turn ; and the Cartesian 
philosophy had become a factor in contemporary 
thought before it was accessible in the writings of its 
author. In 1640 appeared the first edition of the 
Meditations. Copies of it had been given to several 
of those of reputation, of whom may be named Arnauld, 
Gassendi, and Hobbes ; their criticisms and objections 
had been considered by Descartes, and along with his 
replies were published as an appendix to the original 
work. The Responsiones is longer than the original 
treatise, but they are of great value for the true appre- 
hension of the meaning of the author. The Princijna 
Philosophic was published in 1642. The only other 
work published during his life was the treatise on 
the Emotions, De Passionibus. It was written at 
the request of the Princess Elizabeth, a daughter of 
the unfortunate King of Bohemia. He kept up a 
correspondence with her, and in that correspondence 
he set forth his ideas about Ethics. 

The publication of his system resulted in contro- 
versy. The New Philosophy found warm adherents 
and resolute enemies. His disciples were enthusiastic, 
and in the universities they began to advocate the 
system of their master. They roused opposition, they 
really invited attack, and soon the battle raged furi- 
ously. The conflict is of importance only historically, 
and need not detain us here. It may be said, however, 
that Descartes was attacked by Romanist and Pro- 
testant alike. The one accused him of heretical views, 
of an inclination to Protestantism, and even of taking 
part in Protestant worship ; the other charged him with 
scepticism, atheism, and with holding opinions subver- 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 35 

sive of the basis of State, of Church, and — as the con- 
troversy was keenest in university circles — of the 
University. Controversial literature is not of the 
most edifying kind, and a controversy in which merely 
local and transitory topics occupy so large a place may 
be left by us untouched. Hard blows were given and 
received, men shrieked in their wrath, appealed for 
sympathy and protection, as controversialists usually 
do; but the controversy has long fallen into silence, 
and silent let it remain. The most serious consequence 
for Descartes was that it broke up the idyllic and 
meditative repose which had been his, and which 
was necessary for his work. He loved study, and 
for the sake of study he needed repose. His moments 
of rapture were those in which new ideas dawned 
on him. He could be roused to passion and 
enthusiasm only as he attained to clear and distinct 
ideas, his emotions attended the working of his in- 
telligence, and his highest delights were in the 
triumphs of his thought. He was not a courageous 
man, nor was he willing to recognise the merits of 
others. He was original, but not so original as he 
thought. He gave expression to ideas which were in 
the atmosphere of his time, but he still carried with 
him traces and marks of the scholasticism with which 
he thought he had utterly broken. Descartes had 
been led into correspondence with Queen Christina 
of Sweden, the daughter of Gustavus Adolphus. The 
topics are varied and interesting, and the questions 
of the queen and the answers of the philosopher form 
profitable reading. But the queen thought that the 
questions she wished answered and the answers them- 
selves could be better understood by her if she could 



36 THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

hear them from Descartes himself. She urged him to 

come to Stockholm. After some hesitation he finally 
consented to visit the queen. He was royally received, 
scarcely a philosopher in the world's history had such 
a welcome and such honour as Descartes received from 
Queen Christina. 

He went, as he said, "to a land of bears, in the 
midst of rocks and ice." The climate was uncongenial, 
and that winter seemed to have been unusually severe. 
Then the queen insisted that the best time for study 
was in the early morning, so Descartes had to go to 
the palace every morning at five o'clock. One may 
imagine what the atmosphere of Stockholm was like at 
five o'clock of a November morning. To make matters 
worse, the friend with whom he lived was taken ill, 
and Descartes often sat up with him during his illness, 
and after nights of wakefulness went through the cold 
morning air to the palace. Soon he fell ill, and after 
a short period he died on February 11, 1650, in the 
fifty-fourth year of his age. 



CHAPTER II 



Discontent of Descartes with the Knowledge of his Time — His 
Account of that Knowledge — His Four Rules for Guidance — 
The Method of Mathematics — Analysis and Synthesis — 
Specimen of S}mthesis — Extension of Mathematical Method 
— The Question of Descartes and the Question of Kant — 
Nature and Limits of Human Knowledge — The Data of Intelli- 
gence — The Two Methods — The Search for Certainty — Gogito, 
ergo sum — Clear and distinct Knowledge — Questions raised 
by the Cartesian Philosoph} r , and the Answers to them. 



iscontenc of Descartes with the 



The reason of the disconten 
knowledge of his time wasthat he was persuaded l)hat 
it was not grounded in principles, was not proven 
by a right method, that, in short, its foundations were 
insecure and its conclusions unwarranted. Only in 
the field of mathematics could he find reasoned truth, 
grounded on sure principles, and carried to its conclu- 
sions by inevitable inference. The knowledge of his 
time was defective, and carried with it no certainty. 
It had--be£n~g&id3£ri^f^ sources, huddled 

together with no method ; it was guaranteed only by 
authority. What we learn_bj^_autlic^nty™ia-iXQt philo- 
sophical, IL.ia, only historical knowledge. "From my 
childhood I gave ^myHErnncT to the study of letters, 
since I heard from my teachers that by their help a 
clear and certain knowledge of all those things useful 

37 



38 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

for life could be acquired. I burned with an incredible 
desire to learn. But as soon as I had finished the 
complete course of study, at the close of which it is 
the custom to reckon one among the learned, I began 
to think otherwise. For I found myself involved in 
so many doubts and errors that all attempts at 
learning, I judged, profited me nothing save to convince 
me more and more of my own ignorance. Yet I had 
studied in one of the most celebrated schools of Europe, 
in which, if anywhere in the wide world, learned men 
were to be found. All that others learned there, I 
also had been taught. Not content with the sciences 
which we were taught, I read whatever books came 
into my hands on subjects curious and rare. I knew 
the estimate others formed of me. I had learned 
all that they had learned, nor was I inferior to them, 
though some of them were marked out to fill the places 
of teachers. And, in fine, this age I judged to be 
not less flourishing and as fertile in good minds as 
any preceding age. All these things gave me the 
boldness to judge others by myself, and to believe 
that there was no science in existence of such a kind 
as I had been given to believe" (Diss, de Methodo, 
p. 3, Elzevir ed.). 

He proceeds to review the sciences taught at the 
school, — the ancient languages, rhetoric, poetry, mathe- 
matics, theology, and philosophy. None of these 
could be strictly called science, except mathematics, 
though he had found something useful in all of them. 
Mathematics had a solid foundation ; the disquisitions 
of the moralists were towering and magnificent 
palaces built on foundations of sand and mud. 
Philosophy had so many conflicting opinions, every 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 39 

one of which had its learned advocates, but Descartes 
thought only one of them could be true, and it was 
likely they were all false. He resolved to abandon 
the study of letters and to travel. By travel and 
observation, by observing that views which seemed 
extravagant and ridiculous to him were accepted and 
approved by great nations, he was able, he says, to 
" free himself from many errors powerful enough to 
darken our natural intelligence." He resolved to 
make himself a subject of study, in order to find the 
method and the goal of knowledge. 

The knowledge contained in books, composed as they 
were of many opinions of many different individuals 
massed together anyhow, did not seem to him to be so 
near the truth as were the inferences which a man of 
good s ense would draw regarding the matters of his own 
experience. Further, the conclusions which men reach, 
passing as they do from infancy to manhood, and 
governed by desires and by teachers who often did 
not agree with each other, appeared to him less secure 
than they might have been, had reason been mature 
from the moment of birth. Have we, then, each for 
himself to build the house of knowledge from the 
foundation ? Here he brings in the well - known 
illustration of the rebuilding of a city. It is not 
customary to pull down all the houses of a town with 
the single design of rebuilding them differently, and 
to render the streets more handsome. But still, he 
thought that for himself he could not do better than 
resolve to sweep the opinions he had embraced up 
to that time out of the way completely, that he might 
find others more correct, or hold the old opinions after 
they had undergone the scrutiny of reason. He would 



40 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

thus be more successful in the conduct of life, than if 
he were to build on the old foundations and lean on 
principles which he had taken on trust. Like one 
walking in the dark and alone, he meant to proceed 
slowly and watchfully, so that, if he did not make 
much progress, he might secure himself from falling. 
He studied carefully the nature of the task he had 
undertaken, and sought to find the true method by 
which to arrive at the knowledge of whatever lay 
within the compass of his powers. He laid down 
four simple rules for his guidance. First, not to 
accept anything as true which he did not clearly know 
to be such ; second, difficulties under examination to be 
broken up into as many parts as possible, so as to pro- 
vide for an adequate solution ; third, to proceed from 
the simple to the complex, and to go by little and little, 
and step by step, and to assign a certain order to those 
objects which in their own nature do not stand in a 
relation of ground and consequence; and, fourth, to 
omit nothing, but to make as complete an enumeration 
and as wide a review as possible. 

The mathematical method was in his mind, and the 
long chains of simple and easy reasonings by which 
mathematics reached its most difficult conclusions led 
him to believe that all things were connected in the 
same way, and that there was nothing so remote or so 
hidden that it might not be reached, if men were not to 
accept the false for the true, and if they kept in their 
thoughts the order necessary for the deduction of one 
truth from another. So he set himself to a fresh study 
of mathematics and its method, for the purpose of con- 
sidering them in the most general form possible, in 
order to apply them to every class of objects to which 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 41 

they might be legitimately applicable. He tells us 
how he was led to apply algebra to geometry, and the 
mastery which this gave him over both. 

To find a method which will advance from problem 
to problem, from solution to solution, from discovery 
to discovery, with a conviction of certainty in every 
stage of the process, was the object of his quest. He 
seemed to find such a method in the method of 
mathematics. Mathematics did solve problems, it 
made discoveries, and it had been progressive. It 
proceeded from the known to the unknown. Could 
this method be universal ? He set himself to make 
this method valid for the whole doctrine of quantities, 
and by his discovery of Analytical Geometry took a 
long step towards the conquest of the world of quantity. 
But a still greater step was needed in order to make 
the method applicable to all knowledge. It may be 
well, however, to have a clear conception of what 
he understood by mathematical method. Happily, 
we have a statement from himself on this matter. It 
is to be found in the second set of objections to 
the Meditations ; the objector urged Descartes to treat 
the subject more geometrico, in order more effectively 
to convince his readers. The reply is instructive, as it 
discloses to us Descartes' conception of his own method. 
" Two things I distinguish," he says, " in the mode 
of geometrical writing, to wit, the order and the 
method (rationem) of demonstration. The order con- 
sists in this, that the things which are first propounded 
ought to be intelligible without any help from that 
which follows, and all that follows should be seen 
to rest on what had preceded. I have endeavoured to 
follow this order most accurately in my Meditations ; 



42 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

the observance of this was the reason why I did not 
treat the subject of the distinction of Soul and Body 
in my second book, but in the sixth book, and why 
I consciously and intentionally omitted many things, 
because they required an explanation of more things 
than I could overtake. But the mode of demonstra- 
tion is twofold, to wit, one is by analysis and one 
by synthesis. Analysis points out the true way by 
which a matter is discovered methodically, and as it 
were a priori, so that the reader, if he is willing to 
follow and sufficiently attend to it, may understand 
it and make it his own, as if he had discovered it 
for himself." This, however, makes a greater demand 
on the reader than he is disposed to yield to. 
Descartes goes on to describe the synthetic method. 
" Synthesis, on the contrary, proceeds in the opposite 
way, and as it were a posteriori (though the proof 
itself is often more a priori in this than in that), and 
clearly demonstrates the conclusion. It uses a long 
series of definitions, postulates, axioms, theorems, and 
problems, so that if any of its consequences be denied 
it points out that it was contained in the antecedents, 
and thus compel assent from the reader, however 
unwilling and pertinacious he may be." Ancient 
geometers knew both methods, though they used only 
the synthetic method. In the Meditations Descartes 
says he had used the analytic method ; he started from 
the point of view of the ordinary mind, and went on 
step by step to the end. He states that this is the 
best way of teaching. The synthetic method is power- 
ful, because the reader usually willingly assents to 
the definitions, axioms, and postulates, but the difficulty 
in metaphysics is how to obtain the first notions. 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 43 

"In rebus metaphysicis de nulla re magis laboratur 
quam de primis notionibus clare et distincte perci- 
piendis " (Res. ad sec. Objectiones, pp. 82, 83). 

He does give a specimen of the synthetic method, with 
all the machinery of axiom, etc., which we shall find 
to be useful in the sequel. But the main reason why 
this passage has been quoted is to show that when 
Descartes uses the mathematical method he mainly 
uses it in its analytical form. He uses it as an instru- 
ment in the search for, and the discovery of, first 
principles. As he had applied analysis to mathematics 
— and *by the use of it had discovered the universal 
mathematical method — he seeks now to make an an- 
alysis of all knowledge, that he may discover the 
conditions of truth and of error. He determines to 
analyse all opinions into their elements. The opinions 
he has to analyse are there in his own mind. He 
knew what were the opinions of men, for he had 
observed them and had shared them. He felt that 
analysis must not stop with the breaking up of opinion 
into their elements ; he must go on to analyse the mind 
itself. So, for the first time in philosophy, a man has 
arisen who seeks to make consciousness itself the 
object of consciousness. It was like trying to make 
the eye see itself. For the first time the Ego stood 
out as the object of analysis and research. It was 
difficult to see the problem, more difficult to state it, 
and most difficult to approach towards its solution. v 

/ His aim is to discover in every subject the truths \ 

( which are concealed in it, to bring into clear conscious- \ 
ness the various elements which have guided our 

\ thinking and, perhaps, our action. He had universal- / 
\ ised mathematics by claiming for them the right to / 



44 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

| deal with all matters which involved order and quan-\ 
/ tity, whether quantity was found in figures, stars, \ 
/ sounds, or in objects very different from these. The J 
V problem for him was the problem of knowledge. To 
this problem Descartes applies his analytic method. 
He therefore seeks to know all the presuppositions, 
and all the points involved in the fact of knowledge. 
He did not ask Kant's question, How is knowledge 
possible ? for the time of asking that had not yet 
come. Descartes had to ask his own question first, 
for, if he had not asked it, Kant could not have 
conceived his own problem, or its solution. But 
Descartes could ask what were the conditions neces- 
sary for the solution of a problem, and could insist 
on the necessity of a complete survey of all the points 
connected with any problem. This he called enumera- 
tion or induction. He illustrates induction copiously 
from mathematics. At present, however, we look at 
the application of his method of analysis to opinion 
and to the mind itself. After the manner of mathe- 
matics, he is looking for a principle or principles as 
evident, as sure, as clear, and as distinct as are the 
first principles of mathematics. He means to find 
these by analysis, and when he has found them he 
hopes to use them as easily as the geometer uses 
synthetically his definitions and axioms. The basis 
of knowledge is found when, by analysis, we reach 
those principles of immediate certainty, those intuitions 
which cannot be doubted, and which are, when under- 
stood, perfectly clear in the light of reason. By 
analysis to reach these intuitions, and then to build 
on them synthetically until the synthetic propositions 
shall cover the whole of human knowledge, and explain 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 45 

the world and man, — this is a brief description of 
Descartes' hope, and so far of his method. 

To reach the intuition, and to bring it into clear and 
distinct consciousness, and then to build on it in sys- 
tematic fashion is the Cartesian method. To find that 
intuition which is ultimate, to see it in its clearness 
and certainty, and then to build on it step by step — 
this is the aim he has in view. Ultimately the method 
of Descartes is really an inquiry into the nature and 
limits of human knowledge. In fact, he explicitly 
states this in the regulce. "The most important of 
all the problems to be solved is the determination of 
the nature and limits of human knowledge, — two 
points which we embrace in one question, which must 
first of all be methodically investigated. Every one 
who has the least love for truth must have examined 
this question ; since the investigation comprehends the 
whole of method and, as it were, the whole organon of 
knowledge. Nothing seems to me more absurd than 
to contend, at random, about the mysteries of nature, 
the influences of the stars, the unknown events of 
the future, without having once inquired whether the 
human mind is competent to such inquiries" (quoted 
in Kuno Fischer's Descartes, Eng. trans, p. 326). 

Thus the problem is for Descartes the problem of 
human knowledge. Method is not merely an instru- 
ment for the construction of knowledge, it is an ex- 
position of the real nature of mind; and a complete 
analysis of the method will at the same time be a 
complete exposition of the nature and processes of 
human knowledge. Further, as knowledge depends 
on intelligence, we cannot have true knowledge until 
we know intelligence. If, therefore, we really have 



46 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

true knowledge of intelligence, and if the data of 
intelligence are known clearly and distinctly, Descartes 
holds that by deduction from these first principles we 
may arrive at all truth. The difficulty is to arrive at 
the data ; if the data are there, then all men may easily 
draw the inevitable inferences. 

Thus the vital question for him became this — How 
am I to reach the data of intelligence ? How may I 
arrive at these intuitions which are first and ultimate, 
which, being given and clearly and distinctly known, 
form the basis and ground of all certain knowledge. 
One way, we saw, had been already indicated by him. 
It was to start from common experience and by an- 
alysis to bring into clearness the principles which are 
involved in common knowledge. It is a legitimate 
method, and one which Descartes saw to be true and 
fit, but which he did not consistently use. He sud- 
denly stops short in his method of analysis, and sub- 
stitutes for a process of analysis a process of abstraction. 
In fact, he really did not seriously attempt the working 
out of his process of analysis at all. It is not an 
analysis of the nature and limits of the human under- 
standing that we find in his method, though that was 
formally stated to be the intention of it; it is some- 
thing else that is there. His method is a method of 
doubt. 

These, however, are two methods, not one. It is one 
thing to analyse the conditions of knowledge with a 
view to the discovery of the principles involved in 
every process of knowledge, and to bring into clear 
consciousness what men had assumed in all knowledge 
and action, and thus to state clearly the nature and 
principle of intelligence ; it is another thing to apply 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 47 

the solvent of doubt to all our conceptions and to 
sweep away every conception which may be questioned 
and doubted. The first method set forth by Descartes 
himself was one likely enough to lead him to the dis- 
covery of such principles as he might place alongside 
of the axioms of mathematics, and which he might use 
generally as mathematicians used their axioms. But 
this method he really did not use. What he did was 
to doubt all that might be doubted. The goal of 
the one method was the discovery of necessary and 
universal truth ; the goal of the other was merely 
certainty. 

Now, Descartes frequently interchanged these two 
methods, and did not consistently carry either of them 
to their proper issue. In his description of the mathe- 
matical method, and specially in the analytic form 
of it, he had something clear and definite in hand ; but 
then, he never applied it in the search after first prin- 
ciples. What he really did was to proceed on the quest 
after certainty, and to apply to all experience the 
solvent of doubt. By this he did accomplish some- 
thing, but not what he had in view. Reality to the 
ancients was given in sense - consciousness ; to the 
Middle Ages it was given in revelation and guaranteed 
by authority; but to Descartes these two ways had 
become doubtful. It is not necessary to travel over 
the road by which Descartes reached the maxim Cogito, 
ergo sum. It has been so frequently described that 
it has become commonplace. I may doubt everything, 
and every form of experience; experience itself may 
be only another form of dreaming : but, says Descartes, 
I cannot doubt that I doubt. In order to doubt, I must 
be, and must exist as a thinking being. It is possible 



48 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

that there is no object outside of me, that the whole 
sensible world has no reality beyond my thought ; 
but it is incontestable, at least the thought is, that I 
exercise the function of thinking. It is possible that 
an almighty betrayer might play upon me so that 
I might take mere appearance for reality; but he 
could not deceive me if I did not exist, and he could 
not work on me if I were not. " I think, therefore I 
am " ; such, with various illustrations and amplifications, 
is the argument of Descartes. By the application of 
the method of doubt he has reached one certainty, and 
he has a clear and distinct conception of this one 
certainty. It is an axiom, a self-evident truth, like 
the axioms of mathematics ; I cannot state it without 
affirming it. 

This, then, was certain ; for if I thought that all 
was false it was absolutely necessary that I, who thus 
thought, should be somewhat. As this could not be 
shaken, Descartes accepted it as the first principle of 
the philosophy of which he was in search. Having 
obtained his first principle, he proceeded to apply it. 
The procedure was somewhat curious, and it remains 
a curiosity to this day. Instead of inquiring into the 
nature and mode of working of the thinking being, 
or of asking what were the conditions of thought, he 
proceeded in a very different manner. He asked, What 
is involved in thinking? He answered by making 
an abstraction. He could suppose that he had no body, 
that there was no world nor any place in which he 
might be ; but, while he continued to think, he could 
not think himself away. So he came to the conclusion 
that the mind was wholly distinct from the body, and 
though the body was not, the mind would still con- 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 49 

tinue to be what it was. How could lie be sure that 
the mind was ? and how obtain the certainty that 
his first principle was universal and necessary ? The 
answer to this question led him to ask what was 
essential to the truth and certainty of a proposition. 
" All the things which we clearly and distinctly con- 
ceive are true." He adds that there is some difficulty 
in rightly determining what we distinctly conceive. 

Underlying his procedure is the assumption that 
whatever I can think away does not essentially belong 
to me. In the Cogito, ergo sum it is necessary, accord- 
ing to Descartes, to leave behind everything that may 
have a foreign source. So he abstracts from the body 
and abstracts from the object of thought and reduces 
the Cogito to the bare potentiality of thinking, to 
the blank form of thought. The external object 
becomes bare extension, and the subject abstract self- 
consciousness ; and this is his first principle. There is 
no analysis of the self or of self -consciousness, no 
inquiry into the relations of self and not-self, or of 
subject and object ; and his first principle, reduced to 
impotence in the moment of its birth, remains a 
principle with no possibility of movement in it. If he 
had applied the method he describes as the method of 
mathematics, he might have arrived at rational first 
principles implied in all experience. As he proceeded 
by mere abstraction, he had to approach real experience 
only by arbitrary ways, and he left himself little 
possibility of reaching a true interpretation of ex- 
perience. It is true, no doubt, that he, the thinking 
substance, asserts its existence in the very act by which 
it denies everything else. But the thinking subject, 
abstracted by Descartes from all else, and left out of 
4 



So DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

relation to all else, must remain shut up in isolated 
particularism, and can never find a way of getting into 
relations. Descartes did obtain his first principle, but 
it was utterly barren. How are we to pass from the 
thinking substance, which is occupied with itself and 
is moved only by itself, to an extended substance 
which has no quality save extension ? There is really 
no way of transition from the one to the other. We 
shall see how Descartes strove to overcome the 
difficulty. Meanwhile, let us observe how he managed 
to reduce the self to the mere potentiality of thinking. 
" By the term Cogitatio I comprehend all that is in 
the mind, so that we are immediately conscious of it. 
Thus all the operations of the will, intellect, imagina- 
tion, and senses are thoughts." He lays stress on the 
word Immediately, and thus endeavours to ward off the 
objections made to the Cogito, ergo sum, to the effect 
that we may as well say I walk, therefore I am. 
Descartes replies that not walking, but the conscious- 
ness of walking, is the criterion. Thus willing, imagi- 
nation, etc., are not thought, but the consciousness of 
them is thought. These are only occasions of thought, 
and the}^ are not thought until they are referred to 
consciousness. I am always conscious, and conscious- 
ness is Cogitatio. 

But what of all the experiences of the self — the 
impressions, feelings, desires, volitions which make up 
so much of our mental life ? From this point of view 
these are ignored or neglected by Descartes. They are 
merely particulars, and the stress is laid on thinking in 
general. Thus, in addition to abstracting the self from 
the world, it is abstracted also from the concrete 
elements of its own experience. Thus the Cartesian 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 51 

philosophy gave rise to a number of speculations 
regarding the self, the world, and God, which have 
taken various forms in the evolution of Modern 
Philosophy. While it contained the germ of the most 
fruitful developments of the modern spirit, yet the 
modern spirit had to wander in many waste places ere 
it escaped from the snares set to it by the master. 
Abstracted from the contents of concrete experience, 
and reduced to the mere potentiality of thinking in 
general, self -consciousness and self -existence became an 
un verifiable hypothesis, and the very first principle of 
Descartes became an unverifiable assumption. Thus 
with regard to the external world, and the reality of 
the extended, the hypothesis of Descartes prepared the 
way for Berkeley. Still more relevant is the doubt 
cast on the reality of self-consciousness by Hume. 
What is the real content of this consciousness which is 
the basal certainty of Descartes ? Descartes laid stress 
on the fact of thinking in general. Yes ; but what is 
thinking in general apart from the concrete contents of 
thought ? Hume put this question, and Descartes from 
his point of view could have found no relevant answer. 
The Cogitatio, which was to Descartes the basis of 
certainty, became for Hume " nothing but a bundle of 
different perceptions, which succeed each other with an 
inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and 
movement." 

It may be well to quote this classic passage. " For 
my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call 
myself, I always stumble on some particular perception 
or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, 
pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time 
without a perception, and never can observe anything 



52 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

but the perception. When my perceptions are removed 
for any time, as by sound sleep ; so long am I insensible 
of myself, and may truly be said not to exist. . . . Our 
eyes cannot turn in their sockets without varying our 
perceptions. Our thought is still more variable than our 
sight, and all our other senses and faculties contribute 
to this change ; nor is there any single power of the 
soul which remains unalterably the same perhaps for 
one moment. The mind is a kind of theatre, where 
several perceptions successively make their appearance ; 
pass, re-pass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite 
variety of postures and situations" (Hume's Works, 
Green's ed., vol. i. p. 534). 

On the one hand, Descartes had separated thinking 
i from the contents of thought, and had left nothing save 
the abstract potentiality of thinking ; and Hume, on 
the other hand, could find nothing but the stream of 
particular perceptions, a whirl of gliding internal move- 
ments, somehow bound together into a fictitious unity, 
which had gathered to itself the semblance of a 
continuous self. It may be observed that Descartes 
had separated thinking from the objects of thought 
only in an abstract manner, and that he brought back 
the objects one by one as he needed them. But that 
fact does not do away with the mischief wrought by 
the formal abstracting process. For one thing, he is 
never clear about the objective reference of thought, 
nor does he precisely say whether the object of thought 
is a mental state or an idea, or whether it has an 
objective reference. While he speaks metaphysically, 
the object of thought seems to be an idea; when he 
speaks scientifically, the object seems to be objective, 
something almost independent of the idiosyncrasy of 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 53 

the observer. In truth, Descartes may be said to be 
the father of modern science in a more real sense than 
he can be said to be the father of modern philosophy. 
At all events, he left the doctrine of the Self in a most 
inchoate state. 

While Descartes abstracted the thinking process 
from the contents of thought, Hume, on the other 
hand, abstracted the contents of thought from the 
process of thought. In both cases the absent factor 
was present, though ignored by them. Hume always 
found himself occupied with some particular impression, 
but he also found himself in every impression. That 
is to say, that the conscious self was there in every 
state. There was the ultimate mystery of states of 
consciousness, and a consciousness of the states. The 
impressions were there, and along with them there was 
the awareness of their presence. These two, thought 
and the objects of thought, are the inseparable elements 
of the activity of the conscious self, and they must be 
taken together. By separating thought from its object, 
and by separating the mind from the world, Descartes 
introduced that dualism which spoilt the fruitfulness 
of his philosophy, and gave rise to that abstract 
rationalism which divorced philosophy from experience, 
and gave rise also to that empiricism which divorced 
experience from thought. 

Limiting our view for the moment to the abstract 
idea of the self, which he set forth, and deferring the 
account of the attempts to restore the ruptured unity 
of thought and its content, we may say that his 
example and his influence have ruled the problems of 
philosophy to this hour. The problem of the self is 
the hardest in philosophy, and it becomes all the 



54 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

harder when we have to think of many selves in 
interrelation with each other in the unity of one world. 
How far it is from a solution may be seen from a 
glance at the current text-books in psychology, and 
from the discussions about the many selves which the 
ingenuity of psychologists discover within the con- 
sciousness of the one apparent self. Or if a man wants 
to discover the intricacies of the problem, and to be 
aware of the many elements in the problem, he may 
read the discussion in Mr. Bradley's Appearance and 
Reality. 

We do not enter into that discussion nor trace the 
modifications of the doctrine of the self in the schools 
of modern philosophy, whether Hegelian or other. We 
only remark that the problem has been set for all of 
these schools by Descartes. There are many forms of 
the problem and of its solutions. We have the form 
of the problem set forth by Descartes himself, in which 
the Ego is taken to be the form of consciousness, and 
directly affiliated to this is the phaenomenalistic 
spiritualism of Berkeley, the monadological spiritualism 
of Leibniz, and the transcendental idealism of Kant. 
The idea as the content of consciousness has given rise 
to the Ego as absolute substance of Spinoza, the Ego as 
absolute activity by Fichte, and the Ego as absolute 
reason by Schelling and Hegel, and the Ego as 
absolute will by Schopenhauer, and as individual will 
by Wundt. Taking the Ego as empirical principle, and 
subordinating it to its objects, we have the empirical 
philosophies from Locke to Herbert Spencer. Whether 
the outcome be idealism or empiricism, they are alike 
dealing with the problem of the self; and even the 
idealism of the present day in its highest form turns 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 55 

out on inspection to be a construction of the ultimate 
reality in terms dictated by the type of the one self. 
We pass on to a consideration of the way in which 
Descartes endeavoured to heal the breach he caused in 
knowledge by his too abstract treatment of mind and 
matter. 



CHAPTER III 

The Cogito, ergo sum — Its Meaning for Descartes — What is 
Thought ?— Certainty of Intuitive Truth — Appeal to the 
Veracity of God — Need of such Appeal, in regard to Intuitive 
Truth and to the Perception of External Things — Space and 
Matter— Mind and Matter— Argument for the Existence of 
God — Dualism — Reality and Perfection — Objective Reality — 
The Lumen Naturale — Causality — The Place of the Con- 
ception of God in the Cartesian System. 

The Discourse on Method was really a search for the 
elementary truths of Consciousness. The Cogito, ergo 
sum was not regarded as an argument, it was the first 
fundamental rational truth. Its evidence was im- 
mediate intuitive certainty. It was clear and distinct. 
By clearness is meant what is intuitively present and 
manifest to the mind, and distinctness that which is 
entirely clear in itself and precisely determined. All 
these presentations or ideas which are in this sense 
clear and distinct, whose evidence is not to be deduced 
from any others but is grounded in themselves, he calls 
Innate Ideas. The truth of them is self-evident ; they 
are believed as soon as they are understood. 

The Cogito, ergo sum is thus a necessary truth of 
reason, and means that wherever there is consciousness 
there is existence. What, then, is the bearing of this 
universal and necessary proposition on the fact of my 

56 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 57 

particular consciousness as something existing here and 
now ? A universal truth is always apprehended in and 
through the particular; and, in accordance with this, 
the universal truth that wherever there is conscious- 
ness there is existence, carries with it the particular fact 
that, so far as I am conscious, I exist. But the universal 
truth does not carry with it the inference that I have 
existed in the past or will exist in the future. But 
what Descartes needs is just a proof that the self exists 
permanently as a simple indivisible substance, that its 
existence now guarantees its permanent existence. He 
assumes without proof that thought is a quality, and 
being a quality it implies a permanent substance. 

The main use which he makes of the Cogito is that 
he regards it as a universal truth, and a universal 
criterion of truth. The idea of consciousness is in- 
separable from the idea of existence. Not to dwell on 
the difficulty of proving the existence of the self as a 
spiritual substance, and not to insist on the fact that 
existence can never be proved, it can only be defined, 
we may ask how the Cogito should be a criterion of 
truth. Why should it be universally true, and be a 
criterion of all truth ? Supposing it true in itself and 
for us, why should it be true universally ? For the 
sake of clearness let us look again at his definition 
of the Cogito, and take it now from the Principles of 
Philosophy. We use the translation of Professor 
Veitch. " What thought is. — By the word thought I 
understand all that which so takes place in us that we 
of ourselves are immediately conscious of it ; and 
accordingly, not only to understand, to will, to imagine, 
but even to perceive, are here the same as to think. 
For if I say, I see, or, I walk, therefore I am ; and if I 



58 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

understand by vision or walking the act of my eyes 
or of my limbs, which is the work of the body, the 
conclusion is not absolutely certain, because, as is often 
the case in dreams, I may think that I see or walk, 
although I do not open my eyes or move from my 
place, and even, perhaps, although I have no body ; 
but if I mean the sensation itself, or consciousness of 
seeing or walking, the knowledge is manifestly certain, 
because it is then referred to the mind, which alone 
perceives or is conscious that it sees or walks " (p. 196). 
The testimony of consciousness cannot be questioned 
without self-contradiction. He further illustrates it 
thus: "If I judge that there is an earth because I 
touch or see it, on the same ground, and with still 
greater reason, I must be persuaded that my mind 
exists; for it may be that I think I touch the earth 
while there is none in existence ; but it is not possible 
that I should so judge, and my mind that thus judges 
not exist ; and the same holds good whatever object is 
presented to our mind" (p. 197). 

There is still another possibility. Grant the certainty 
in possession of the mind when it is face to face with 
intuitive truth, is this certainty to be trusted ? There 
are certain common notions out of which the mind 
frames various demonstrations that carry conviction to 
such a degree as to render doubt impossible. As long 
as we attend to the premises from which necessary 
conclusions are drawn we feel assured of their truth ; 
" but, as the mind cannot always think of these with 
attention, when it has the remembrance of a conclusion 
without recollecting the order of the deduction, and is 
uncertain whether the author of its being has created 
it of a nature that is liable to be deceived, even in 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 59 

what appears most evident, it perceives that there is 
just ground to distrust the truth of such conclusions, 
and that it cannot possess any certain knowledge until 
it has discovered its author" (pp. 198, 199). Descartes 
is often untrue to his own method, and trusts it only 
with a hesitating faith. It was open to him to take 
his stand on the trustworthiness of the faculty of 
knowledge, and to say that mind is to be trusted when 
it makes affirmations about truth which it sees to be 
true as soon as it understands it. To deny that two 
and two make four is possible only on the assumption 
that the faculty of knowledge is essentially untrust- 
worthy. If the mind cannot trust itself in the know- 
ledge of its necessary affirmations, how can it trust 
itself in the search after the knowledge of the author 
of its being ? 

This is one of the instances in which the father of 
rationalism manifests his distrust of reason. Reason 
is to be trusted only till it establishes the existence of 
God, and then it assumes an attitude of blind trust, 
and leaves the responsibility with the author of it. 
If he were true to his own principles he would boldly 
have claimed for reason the right to accept as true all 
that reason demanded as necessary for the validity 
of its operations. What is the good of establishing a 
universal criterion of truth if one admits the possibility 
of a breakdown on the part of the criterion in its most 
fundamental operation ? 

It is not, however, the only occasion of the advent 
of the Pens ex machina in the system of Descartes. 
Dealing with the principles of material things, in the 
second part of the Principles of Philosophy, he makes 
the same appeal to the veracity of God which he had 



60 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

made in relation to the self. " Every perception," 
he says, "comes to us from some object different from 
our mind ; for it is not in our power to cause ourselves 
to experience one perception rather than another, the 
perception being entirely dependent on the object 
which affects our senses " (Veitch's Translation, p. 232). 
We should be deceived if the idea of this extended 
matter were presented to us by some object which 
possessed neither extension, figure, nor motion. Having 
made this remark at some length, he ends the para- 
graph by the statement that " this extended substance 
is what we call body or matter." " Pleasure and pain 
and other sensations do not arise from the mind and do 
not belong to it as a thing that thinks, but only in so 
far as it is united to another thing extended and move- 
able, which is called the human body." By the senses, 
then, we are not in touch with reality. Their purpose is 
teleological, to wit, to tell us what is beneficial or hurt- 
ful to the composite whole of mind and body. What, 
then, is body ? " The nature of body consists not in 
weight, hardness, colour, and the like, but in extension 
alone. It is simply a substance extended in length, 
breadth, and depth." The properties of matter have 
vanished, and there is nothing left for our considera- 
tion save the properties of space. In Section 18 we 
have the curious conclusion that if the matter within 
a vessel could be entirely removed the space within the 
vessel would no longer exist, "for two bodies must 
touch each other when there is nothing between them, 
and it is manifestly contradictory for two bodies to be 
apart, in other words, that there should be a distance 
between them, and this distance yet be nothing; for 
all distance is a mode of extension, and therefore 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 61 

cannot exist without an extended substance " (p. 242). 
The underlying assumption is, that all space must be 
always full of matter. In fact, this is a necessary 
result of the identification of the properties of matter 
with the properties of space. It is surprising that 
Descartes, having limited the conception of matter 
to the notion of extension, should yet, in a measure, 
have anticipated the statement of Newton's first law 
of motion. " Harum prima est, unamquamque rem, 
quatenus est simplex et indivisa, manere quantum 
in se est in eodem semper statu, nee unquam mutari 
nisi a causis externis " (Prin. ii. 37). This is a state- 
ment of the fundamental property of matter as it is 
generally defined by physicists. Every individual 
thing, so far as in it lies, perseveres in the same state. 
But this is no property of mere extension, and cannot 
be deduced from the conception of space. It is true 
of bodies within space in their interaction with one 
another, but if space be the only form of substance, 
and all existing matter but affections of space, there 
can be no interaction. 

Having attenuated the conception of matter until 
there is nothing left but extension, and having set 
forth the conception of mind as thinking and nothing 
more, the problem arose how to get these into relation 
with one another. It is not enough to plead the mere 
empirical fact that these are somehow united in the 
union of soul and body. For mind is unextended, 
indivisible, and as " nothing besides thinking belongs 
to the essence of the mind, it follows that nothing 
else belong to it. But the essence of matter is 
extendedness, divisibility; and the natures of these 
substances are to be held not only as diverse, but in 



62 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

some measure as contraries." How, then, we ask 
again, are they to be brought into relation to each 
other. Here is a knot which Descartes cannot untie, 
and he brings in the Deity to untie a knot which 
he has himself perversely tied. Man does need God, 
of that there can be no doubt; but why postulate 
the action of the Deity merely to restore a harmony 
only created by the inconsistent thinking of man ? 
The absolute disparity of mind and matter, or, to put it 
more particularly, of soul and body, formed a crux for 
the Cartesian school which they were never able to 
overcome. It is not our purpose to enumerate all the 
devices employed by them to overcome the difficulty. 
It is an interesting chapter in the history of specu- 
lation, and parallels to it may be found in many 
quarters. By our undue abstractions we rupture the 
unity which lies before our eyes, and has only to 
be rightly seen to be understood ; and then we strive 
all our lives to restore the lost unity, and without 
success. 

Descartes postulated God, first, to vindicate his trust 
in first principles ; and second, to maintain a relation- 
ship between mind and matter, which he had made 
so disparate as to leave no conceivable bond of union 
between them. Why did he not retrace his steps 
and revise his definitions ? The question is unanswer- 
able. As a matter of fact, he uses principles which 
he holds to be truths evident by the light of reason 
to prove the existence of God, and then he seeks to 
guarantee the validity of reason by the veracity of God. 
He also places the two elements of human nature so 
far apart, that any possible union between them can 
be maintained only by the power of God. Thus there 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 63 

is necessary a continued creation, or an abiding exercise 
of divine power, to maintain the commerce of mind and 
body. It was necessary for Descartes to prove the 
existence of God, if for no other reason than for this — 
to make his philosophy a thing which could work. 

We do not mean to say that Descartes has con- 
tributed nothing worthy to the argument for the 
being of God. At present we remark only, that it 
is not a worthy procedure to bring in the notion of 
the Deity to save a system from bankruptcy. In 
almost all his works Descartes reiterates his proof 
for the being of God. It is substantially the same 
in all of them, though stress is laid now on this and 
now on that aspect of the argument, as this or that 
logical need is uppermost. As we have already said, 
Descartes had failed to do justice to his own principle 
of the unity of thought and being in self-consciousness. 
If the consciousness of self is the first certainty, and if 
we cannot abstract from it, then to seek to go beyond 
it is futile. But Descartes did not trust his own first 
principle. We cannot go beyond the consciousness 
of self, for there is nothing prior to it, and, besides, 
all objects are in relation to it. There can be nothing 
which is not in possible relation to the self, and this 
relationship is the presupposition of thought. It is not 
possible to take the mind as a thing among other 
things; a mere res cogitans can apprehend nothing 
but thoughts or ideas. Outside these thoughts and 
ideas there is another and a contrary series with which 
thought has nothing to do. Matter thus takes on the 
attribute of unintelligibility, and notwithstanding the 
empirical unity of mind and body a chasm exists 
between them, for thought is not extension, and 



64 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

matter cannot think. It is a dualism which is funda- 
mental and absolute. 

It was necessary for Descartes to find some prin- 
ciple whereby the absolute opposition of mind and 
matter could be overcome. There must be a way by 
which the subjective consciousness can hold intercourse 
with the objective order. He strives to connect the 
consciousness of self with the consciousness of God. 
If we can find God in our minds we have a way by 
which we can reach the world and bring it within the 
circle of possible knowledge. 

How are we to pass, then, from the simple and sure 
datum of consciousness to the knowledge of the world ? 
The answer of Descartes is, that wherever we find a 
conviction as clear, distinct, and indubitable as is 
contained in the Cogito, ergo sum we are warranted 
in assuming it to be an indication of truth, and an 
index of real existence. In the Reply to the Second 
Objections, Descartes gives us a specimen of the 
geometrical method of procedure in its application to 
the demonstration of the being of God. He proceeds 
by definitions, postulates, axioms, and propositions. 
The relevant matter at present is the axioms, or those 
ultimate propositions which to Descartes are appre- 
hended with as much clearness and distinctness, and 
with as stringent a necessity as the Cogito is appre- 
hended. These are not deduced from the Cogito ; 
they are placed side by side with it as possessing the 
same note of self-evidence. These axioms, however, 
enable Descartes to pass from the barrenness of the 
mere Cogito to the wider knowledge which he needs. 
It is not necessary to quote the ten axioms which 
he enumerates. The meaning of the first axiom is 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 65 

that nothing exists of which it cannot be inquired, 
what is the cause of its existence ? of the second, that 
the conservation of a thing requires as great a cause 
as the production of it. The third is of more import- 
ance, — at least, it plays a greater part in the system 
of Descartes. "Any thing or any perfection of a 
thing actually existent cannot have nothing, or a 
thing non-existent, for the cause of its existence." And 
the fourth axiom states : " All the reality or perfection 
which is in a thing is found formally or eminently 
in its first or total cause " (Veitch, p. 270). The fifth 
axiom says "that the objective reality of our ideas re- 
quires a cause in which this same reality is contained, 
not simply objectively, but formally or eminently." 
Formally or eminently are the notes of real exist- 
ence, in distinction from merely conceived existence. 
The other axioms need not be quoted, but these are 
quoted as they are of significance in connection with 
the proof of the existence of God. How are we to 
reach objective reality ? or what is meant by the 
objective reality of an idea ? Descartes held that the 
axiom, that " the objective reality of our idea requires 
a cause in which this reality is contained" must of 
necessity be admitted, as upon it alone depends the 
knowledge of all things, whether sensible or insens- 
ible. " From whence," he asks, " do we know that 
the sky exists ? Is it because we see it ? But this 
vision does not affect the mind unless in so far as 
it is an idea, and an idea inhering in the mind itself, 
and not an image depicted on the phantasy; and, by 
reason of this idea, we cannot judge that the sky exists 
unless we suppose that every idea must have a cause 
of its objective reality which is really existent, and ' 
5 



66 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

this cause we judge to be the sky itself, and so in 
other instances " (Veitch, p 270). 

Thus for Descartes, the objective reality of an idea 
demands that something must exist, apart from the 
idea, which shall have, in fact, the qualities, charac- 
teristics, and features which appear in the idea. 
Every idea must have a cause of its objective reality 
which is really existent. It is a large order. In the 
statement of the axiom it appears as a consequence 
of axioms four and five, which we have already quoted. 
Everything and every perfection of a thing must have 
a cause, and all the reality or perfection of a thing 
must be in its first cause, and therefore he holds that 
the contents of an idea must be regarded as an 
existing thing. The axiom is of great importance 
in the procedure of Descartes. On it he relies for any 
advance he may make from thought to reality. By 
its supposed cogency he passes from the experience 
of thinking to the real existence of the thinking being, 
and the real existence of the cause in which this same 
reality is contained. 

Thus we have only to determine the contents of our 
ideas, and to state these contents clearly and distinctly, 
and we have the means of determining existence. From 
the necessary connexion between ideas and their 
causes we have only to know the ideas, and the 
knowledge of the causes follows of necessity ; the 
perfection of a thing will be found in its first and 
total cause. Unless we carry with us this axiom, 
and the stress laid on it by Descartes, we shall not 
appreciate, at its real value, the statement of the proof 
for the existence of God. In virtue of this axiom 
we have only to show that we have an idea in our 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 67 

minds — a clear, definite, and distinct idea, and the 
objective reference follows of necessity. All ideas 
have been sifted by him through the operation of 
doubt, and only those which have survived the sifting 
process remain. These survivals of the fittest have 
the properties of clearness, distinctness, self-evidence, 
and necessity, which guarantee them as the legitimate 
fruit of the lumen naturale, and we accept them as 
indubitable. In virtue of the axiom on which we 
have spoken we pass from these ideas, thus certified, 
to the real existence of the causes of these ideas. It 
is a short and easy method, and one which, he thinks, 
can easily surmount the absolute difference which 
separates mind from matter. But in truth, when 
he brings the principle of causality to bear on the 
question, and when he has put his axioms into harness, 
the difference between mind and matter, on which such 
stress was laid in other references, seems to disappear. 
For ideas are the copy of reality, and if we have the 
copy we can know or infer the character of the reality. 
At this point, again, comes in the reference to the 
veracity of the First Great Cause, for there is a 
necessity for a guarantee for the correspondence 
between the copy and the reality. It becomes some- 
what monotonous. 

Ideas thus possessed are available, in virtue of the 
axiom, for the determination of existence. But he had 
seen the need of discrimination among ideas. Not all 
ideas are available for the determination of existence. 
Only those ideas which are clear and distinct have the 
note of certainty. Only those ideas, in other words, 
which cannot be doubted have a bearing on objective 
reality. I am certain of my own existence : How is 



68 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

that certainty to be extended to the world of things 
and to God ? Is there any being without me, the 
existence of which may be as clear and indubitable 
as my own existence ? This raises the Cartesian ques- 
tion in its most general form. He was aware of the 
problem ; he recurs to it again and again, both in his 
systematic works and in his Answers to Objections. 
At one time he sets himself to examine the ideas he 
finds in his mind. He subjects them all to a rigid dis- 
crimination. He refers them to their sources. Some 
he finds to be native to the mind, or innate ; some have 
been voluntarily formed ; and a great many have been 
manifestly received from an external source. First of 
all, there is the fundamental certainty that I exist. " It 
is true, perhaps, that those very things which I suppose 
to be non-existent, because they are unknown to me, are 
not in truth different from myself whom I know. This 
is a point I cannot determine, and do not now enter 
into any dispute regarding it. I can only judge of things 
that are known to me : I am conscious that I exist, 
and I who know that I exist inquire into what I am. 
It is, however, perfectly certain that the knowledge of 
my existence, thus precisely taken, is not dependent on 
things, the existence of which is as yet unknown to me ; 
and consequently it is not dependent on any of the 
things I can feign in imagination" (Veitch, p. 108). 
He is a thinking being, and true knowledge is possible 
only to thought. It is through thought alone that 
our ideas of things can become clear and distinct, and 
attain to certainty. 

I can at least be sure that every conception I have 
is my conception. And every conception proves that 
I am, for it is mine. But can I be sure that this bodv 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 6g 

exists because I touch it. May it not be a mere 
imagination or a dream ? Even if it be an imagination 
or a dream, I who touch it do exist. After insisting 
at length on this fact, as he thinks it to be, he goes on 
to inquire into the character of the objects which are 
commonly thought to be most distinctly known. For 
the sake of clearness he takes not bodies in general, 
but one body, and selects a piece of wax. He traces it 
through all the changes through which the piece of 
wax may be supposed to pass. When we examine it 
we find in it somewhat of the sweetness of the honey 
it contained, something of the odour of the flowers 
from which it was gathered ; colour, figure, size are 
there : it is hard, cold, — in short, all the attributes 
of body are present in the bit of wax. But place it 
near the fire and it melts. The properties of the wax 
change as we look. What remains is something ex- 
tended, ductile, changeable, something which may pass 
into an endless series of forms. "What, then, is the 
piece of wax that can only be perceived by the mind ? 
It is certainly the same which I see, touch, imagine ; 
and, in fine, it is the same which, from the beginning, 
I believed it to be. But (and this is of moment to 
observe) the perception of it is neither an act of sight, 
of touch, or of imagination, and never was either of 
these, though it might formerly seem so, but is simply 
an intuition (inspection) of the mind, which may be 
imperfect and confused, as it formerly was, or very 
clear and distinct, as it is at present, according as the 
attention is more or less directed to the elements which 
it contains, and of which it is composed" (Veitch, 
p. 112). 

It appears, then, that the way to a clear and distinct 



70 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

conception of body is to analyse it into its elements, 
and to attend to these elements so that we may obtain 
clear intuitions of them. As for these ideas, the sources 
of which are without, arc not the presentations of the 
senses effects and copies of things without us? Are 
not the copies indubitable evidence of the existence 
of their causes? It is easier to ask this question 
than to answer it. The presentations of the senses are 
never false. But I may err in the interpretation of 
them. I may think of the sun as a round disc that 
moves of itself, or I may think of it as the centre of 
the solar system. There is the presentation and there 
is the interpretation of it; and while the one is not 
false, the other may be. It is true, indeed, that the 
common sense of mankind has declared that the pre- 
sentations of sense are related to external objects. 
But Descartes affirms that if any of our ideas is to 
make us certain of the existence of things beyond 
us, it is not sensation which can assure us of this 
existence. No doubt our sensations are not subject 
to our will, and by a natural instinct we refer them 
to the object outside of us; but these instincts are not 
infallible, and, though sensations are involuntary, it is 
possible that they may arise from the conditions of 
our nature. Even as effects produced on us by ex- 
ternal objects, it does not follow that they are copies 
of their causes, for an effect may be unlike its cause. 
From the sensational point of view, Descartes con- 
cludes that we have no certain knowledge that there 
is a world outside of us. How, then, do we come to 
know that there is an external world ? 

In his answer to this question Descartes falls back 
on the principle of causality. This is a clear and 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 71 

distinct conception ; and it is certain that from nothing, 
nothing comes ; and that everything is the effect of a 
producing cause. The cause can never be less than 
the effect. It may contain more reality than the 
effect : it can never contain less. The artist is greater 
than his work, since in him there is something which 
he has not put into his work. Or, to state the case 
of equality between effect and cause, there is the form 
and its impression. The causa eminens is illustrated 
in the former case, the causa formalis in the latter. 
If we have an idea in our minds which contains a 
reality greater than our nature, then it cannot have 
come from ourselves : it must have an external source. 
Have we such ideas ? 

To answer in detail would take us too long. He 
examines a number of ideas, and concludes that if 
there is found in an idea something which is not in 
its cause it must, of course, derive this from nothing. 
"I am thus clearly taught by the natural light that 
ideas exist in me as pictures or images, which may 
in truth readily fall short of the perfections of the 
objects from which they are taken, but can never 
contain anything greater or more perfect" (Veitch, 
pp. 122, 123). The conclusion is thus stated: "If the 
objective reality [or perfection] of any one of my ideas 
be such as clearly to convince me, that the same reality 
exists in me neither formally nor eminently, and if, as 
follows from this, I myself cannot be the cause of it, 
it is a necessary consequence that I am not alone in 
the world, but that there is besides myself some other 
being who exists as the cause of that idea : while, on 
the contrary, if no such idea be found in my mind, 
I shall have no sufficient ground of assurance of the 



72 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

existence of any other being besides myself ; for, after 
a most careful search, I have, up to this moment, 
been unable to discover any other ground" (p. 123). 
He examines in this light the ideas he finds within 
himself. To what may be described as the secondary 
qualities of matter, to ideas connected with them he 
finds that he does not need to assign any author 
beside himself. Ideas of matter which are clear 
and distinct, such as those of substance, duration, 
number, he might have taken from the idea of him- 
self. As to extension, figure, situation, and motion : " It 
is true that they are not formally in me, since I am 
merely a thinking being; but because they are only 
certain modes of substance, and because I myself am 
a substance, it seems possible that they may be con- 
tained in me eminently" (p. 125). 

Thus what we represent to ourselves by way of the 
senses as qualities of reality is neither clear nor dis- 
tinct, and contains less reality than is contained in our 
thinking nature. In truth, what we perceive in them 
may be contained in our thinking nature, or may be 
derived from it. So he comes to the conclusion, " that 
the cause and the origin of my conceptions of finite 
being need not exist without me. If, in regard to 
all finite being, I am not clearly convinced that I 
cannot be myself the source and origin of my own 
ideas, is there any idea the source and origin of which 
cannot be in me either formally or eminently ? " He 
has proved to his own satisfaction that modes of sub- 
stance, being less than substance, may be conceived 
by the mind from itself. As regards substance of a 
finite kind, it is not clear that it can contain any 
perfection greater than the mind, which is itself sub- 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 73 

stance, and so, from the view of substance and of 
modes in finite being, there is nothing to compel the 
mind to conceive of absolute perfection. But I do 
have an idea of perfection. As this idea must have 
a cause, what is the cause of it? It has not come 
from the mind itself, as I am a finite being, subject 
to error and far from perfect. The principle of caus- 
ality is clear and distinct, as clear and distinct as the 
principle of all certainty, because it is impossible for 
us to think and not to be. But the principle of caus- 
ality involves the principle that the cause of a concep- 
tion has more reality than we have in ourselves. The 
idea of perfection cannot be derived from finite being, 
neither from the world nor from ourselves ; but the idea 
is there — we are not the cause of it, and it must have 
a cause. There must therefore be a Being without 
us who must have all the perfections which we con- 
ceive as belonging to Him. Thus we come again to 
the necessity of the existence of a God. We have 
seen how imperative is this need on the theory of 
Descartes. God is needed for many reasons. Let us 
look now at the way in which Descartes endeavours 
to justify the need. 



CHAPTER IV 

The Steps of the Argument for the Existence of God — The 
Knowledge of Self gives the Knowledge of God — The Notion 
of the Infinite a Positive Notion — Reality not explicable 
from the Notion of Contingent and Possible Existence — What 
the Conception of God is — Truth and Error — Understanding 
and Will — Final Cause rejected — Relation of God to Mind 
and to Matter — Cause and Effect — Reason and Consequent. 

The proof of the existence of God is the essential 
principle of the Cartesian philosophy. On it everything 
depends. The principles of reality and the veracity 
of God are for Descartes principles which constitute 
the foundation of knowledge, and are the main support 
of the remainder of the system. We have the various 
elements of the proof set forth in various ways. When 
he leads us along the path which he took in his search 
for truth, and proceeds analytically in the exposition 
of his system, as he has done in the Discourse on 
Method and in his Meditations, he states first the 
certainty of self-consciousness and its implications. 
Briefly and in outline it is this : we exist and we have 
the idea of a most perfect Being; and, as we are 
ourselves imperfect, that idea is not produced by us — 
it must therefore have a cause. That is one line of 
exposition pretty frequently expressed in his various 
works. 

74 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 75 

When, however, he proceeds synthetically, as in the 
Answers to the Second Objections and in the Principles, 
he begins with the ontological argument and sets forth 
the idea of God as an axiom, from which all else flows 
as a consequence. The argument of Descartes is often 
identified with the ontological argument associated 
with the name of Anselm, and also with subsequent 
arguments of the same kind. While there are re- 
semblances there are also differences between the two 
At ail events, Descartes, who shows his acquaintance 
with the scholastic argument, was persuaded that the 
objections to it did not touch his own argument. From 
the Anselm ic argument it would appear that from the 
mere idea of God His existence followed, just as surely 
as from the idea of a triangle the properties of a 
triangle followed. Either He is the most perfect Being 
or He is nothing at all. But He would not be the 
most perfect Being if He lacked anything, or if the note 
of reality did not attach to Him. But the fatal 
objection was taken, Why should existence as thought 
be existence in reality. Our idea of God is a con- 
ception: are we to hold that a conceived object is 
necessarily real ? Does the conception of God stand on 
a different footing from all other conceptions ? At the 
best, a conception only implies the possible existence 
of the conceived object. According to the ontological 
proof, as stated by Anselm, God alone forms an 
exception to this rule. This form of the proof failed 
to show that the idea of God is a necessary one, 
inseparably bound up with the very nature of man, 
and imbedded in human nature as such. 

Descartes thought that he did ground the idea of 
God in the very nature of man, and had proved it to be 



76 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

a necessary conception. Let us trace the steps of his 
argument. The discipline of doubt had left us with 
one certainty. If we doubt, we are. This is clear and 
distinct, and gives us the principle that truth consists 
in clearness and distinctness of knowledge. Then we 
have clear and distinct knowledge of the principle of 
causality. But the principle of causality assures us 
that the cause must at least be equal to the effect. In 
fact, the cause of a conception must contain more 
reality than the effect. Thus we have the idea of God, 
and the cause of the idea of God is God Himself. We 
exist and we have the idea of God, how did we obtain 
that idea ? Did we ourselves produce that idea ? 
Descartes is at pains to prove that we cannot be the 
cause of the idea of perfection which we have. From 
the nature of causality we must be perfect to produce 
the idea of perfection. But we are finite : how can we 
have the conception of the infinite ? we are relative : 
how could we reach the idea of the absolute ? we are 
imperfect, and yet we have the idea of perfection. 
Even if we have the capacity of becoming perfect, yet 
what is required is not capacity but actuality. There 
must be a cause for the idea of God, and we cannot be 
that cause. 

But the principle of causality is a principle of being 
as well as of thinking. We may ask what is the cause 
of our being. Can the cause of my existence be a 
being who is not perfect ? Had I made myself I might 
have given myself all conceivable perfection. But I 
have not made myself, nor can I conserve myself, for I 
am not the cause of my own existence. " From the fact 
alone that I am, and have the idea of a most perfect 
Being, or God, it follows with complete clearness that 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 77 

God also exists." We have this idea; we have not 
received it through the senses, we have received it 
immediately from God. " It is not even a pure produc- 
tion or fiction of my mind, for it is not in my power 
to take from or add to it ; and consequently, there but 
remains the alternative that it is innate, in the same 
way as is the idea of myself. And in truth, it is not to 
be wondered at that God, at my creation, implanted 
this idea in me, that it might serve, as it were, for the 
mark of the workman impressed on his work : and 
it is not also necessary that the mark should be some- 
thing different from the work itself; but, considering 
only that God is my Creator, it is highly probable that 
He in some way fashioned me after His own image 
and likeness, and that I perceive this likeness, in which 
is contained the idea of God, by the same faculty by 
which I apprehend myself, — in other words, when I 
make myself the object of reflection, I not only find 
that I am an imperfect and dependent being, and one 
who unceasingly aspires after something better and 
greater than he is ; but, at the same time, I am assured 
likewise that He upon whom I am dependent possesses 
in Himself all the good after which I aspire, and that 
not merely indefinitely and potentially, but infinitely 
and actually, and that He is thus God " (Veitch, pp. 131, 
132). Descartes himself expressly says that the force 
of the proof consists in this, that he himself, with the 
idea of God in him, could not exist if God in reality 
were not. That if the God Whom he conceives, the 
Being who has all the perfections which he does not 
comprehend, Whom he can only touch afar off with 
his thoughts, the Being who is removed from all kinds 
of imperfection, did not exist, then there was really 



78 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

no certainty, no true knowledge, and no real exist- 
ence. 

Here, then, there is something different from the 
scholastic argument. Descartes tries to ground his 
argument in human experience. The idea of God, he 
contends, is given us in our inner experience, the idea 
is there in the midst of our world of ideas. The know- 
ledge of self gives the knowledge of God. We cannot 
get rid of the idea of perfection, and the idea of a 
perfect Being is the idea of God. " By the name God 
I understand a substance infinite, independent, all- 
knowing, all-powerful, and by which I myself, and 
every other thing that exists, if any such there be, 
were created. But these properties are so great and 
excellent that the more attentively I consider them 
the less I feel persuaded that the idea of them owes 
its origin to myself alone. And thus it is absolutely 
necessary to conclude, from all that I have before said, 
that God exists : for though the idea of substance be in 
my mind owing to this, that I myself am a substance, 
I should not, however, have the idea of an infinite 
substance, seeing I am a finite being, unless it were 
given me by some substance in reality infinite " (Yeitch, 
pp. 125, 126). 

At this point we are reminded of the laboured 
argumentation of Hamilton, Mansel, and Spencer, and 
the position they have taken that knowledge of the 
absolute and the infinite is impossible. These are 
merely negative notions, they say, and if we try to 
think them we fall into contradictions. They define 
the absolute as that which is out of all relation, and 
the infinite as that which has no limits. This is not 
the place to argue the question. We mention that 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 79 

movement of modern thought because we wish to say 
that the objections based on it had been clearly before 
the mind of Descartes and had been dealt with by him. 
He affirms, in virtue of the axiom of causality, that 
ideas of which we are in possession are available for 
the determination of existence. He affirms that he has 
an idea of the absolute and the infinite, and he asks 
himself what is the difference in content between the 
idea of the absolute and the relative, between the 
infinite and the finite. Is the absolute contradictory 
of the relative ? Is the infinite the negative of the 
finite ? He considers the question, and his answer 
virtually is that we have the idea of finite and relative 
existence, but in addition we have a positive conception 
of infinite and absolute existence. Reality to him is 
not finite and relative: it is infinite, absolute. His 
argument points to the conclusion, though he does not 
give it formal expression, that finite and infinite, 
absolute and relative, involve one another ; that we 
cannot apprehend the relative or the finite without 
apprehending along with them the absolute and the 
infinite. It is an important position, and ought to 
have had a greater influence on subsequent speculation 
than that which it really had. It may have been that 
the exposition of it by Descartes was defective, that 
he made the distinction mainly as a matter of fact, 
and did not ground it in principle. At all events, the 
statement is important, and we quote it. " I must not 
imagine that I do not apprehend the infinite by a true 
idea, but only by the negation of the finite, in the same 
way that I comprehend repose and darkness by the 
negation of motion and light ; since, on the contrary, 
I clearly perceive that there is more reality in the 



80 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

infinite substance than in the finite, and therefore that 
in some way I possess the perception (notion) of the 
infinite before that of the finite, that is, the perception 
of God before that of myself, for how could I know 
that I doubt, desire, or that something is wanting to 
me, and that I am not wholly perfect, if I possessed no 
idea of a Being more perfect than myself, by compar- 
ison of which I knew the deficiencies of my nature ? " 
(Veitch,p. 126). 

By this we see that Descartes looked at the infinite 
as the positive idea, not obtained by negativing the 
finite, but by negativing the limitations and imperfec- 
tions which belong to the very finiteness of the finite. 
Descartes did not unfold the full meaning of the 
situation involved in the statement, " I had the per- 
ception of God before that of myself." If he had he 
would have anticipated some of the most characteristic 
positions of the philosophy of the nineteenth century. 
The real meaning of his principle is, that the self -con- 
sciousness of the finite being is bound up with the 
consciousness of God, and that the apprehension of the 
finite and relative involves the apprehension of the 
absolute and the infinite. 

Complete, absolute, and infinite reality cannot be 
explained from the idea of contingent and of possible 
existence. Thus the first element in the Cartesian proof 
of the existence of God is simply this, that the idea of 
absolute and complete reality cannot be explained by 
reference to finite and limited ideas. He has demon- 
strated that he is in possession of the idea of a complete 
and perfect Being, but is this merely an idea am one 
others in his possession ? Am I constrained to regard 
this idea as a proof of the divine causality, and con- 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 81 

sequently of the divine existence ? As I am certain of 
myself I ought, if this argument is to be conclusive, to be 
sure that this idea is not caused by me, but is the effect 
of God in me. The steps of the argument are, that this 
idea is necessary, and that it cannot be accounted for by 
me or anything in me. For an imperfect being cannot 
produce the conception of a perfect Being. It is not 
merely that we have the conception of a perfect Being, 
this was the sole content of the Anselmic proof ; it is 
that we have this conception while we ourselves are 
imperfect. Thus the proof of the existence rests on 
self-knowledge, Thus Descartes supplies to the formal 
ontological argument the starting-point of its signi- 
ficance — that from the very nature of man he is 
constrained to conceive a perfect Being ; and this con- 
ception is not the product of man, but the result and 
effect of the causality of God, and therefore it is a 
proof of the divine existence. 

Our idea of God must therefore be necessary or 
original, and it must be of divine origin. These are 
the two conditions of the Cartesian proof. Ultimately 
it really comes to this : that as the certainty of self is 
an intuition contained in the fact of self-consciousness, 
so the certainty of God is given in the consciousness of 
the idea of God. The successive delineations of the 
contents of the proof are not so much steps in the 
argument as the unfolding of the contents of the idea 
of God, and the discovery of the fact that existence is 
contained in the conception. Thus self-consciousness 
and the consciousness of God are aspects of the same 
intuition ; and they belong together. 

We are apt to do injustice to the argument of Des- 
cartes by certain modes of stating it. It is necessary 
6 



82 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

to state it consecutively, and to pass from self-certainty 
to causality, and from causality to the ontological proof 
of the existence ; but these are not to Descartes steps 
in a consecutive chain of reasoning, they are rather 
elements in one complex intuition. They are not 
separable in reality, though they have been stated one 
after another. Universal doubt had revealed to him 
his thinking nature and its imperfection. He grasped 
the one certainty, and out of it flowed the conscious- 
ness of his imperfection, and the implied consciousness 
that there must be perfection somewhere. The idea 
of the perfect is given in the consciousness of imper- 
fection. In this way he connects the idea of self with 
the idea of God, and he thinks that the same necessity 
belongs to both ideas. Connecting this conclusion with 
the conception of the infinite, which we saw Descartes 
regards as positive, he argues that the idea of the 
infinite is primary and original, and the consciousness 
of imperfection derivative. To be imperfect is one 
thing, to know that we are imperfect is another thing. 
If I can make my own imperfection clear to myself, I 
can do so only in the light of the idea of perfection. 
To know my defects is a work which implies the work 
of intelligence. If a man had not the idea of perfection 
implicitly within his own mind he could never come to 
the knowledge of his imperfection. 

If we had no truth in our possession we should 
never have entered on that process of self-examination 
which led through doubt to certainty. Thus from the 
idea of the perfect has come the idea of the imperfect. 
The perfect is first, and the consciousness of imper- 
fection is second. True, it seemed otherwise as we 
proceeded on our way to search for truth, but now, 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 83 

Descartes concludes, in our certainty of the idea of God 
all other certainty has its foundation. "It is enough that 
I rightly understand this, and judge that all which I 
clearly perceive, and in which I know that there is some 
perfection, and perhaps also an infinity of properties 
of which I am ignorant, are formally or eminently in 
God, in order that the idea I have of him may become 
the most true, clear, and distinct of all the ideas in my 
mind" (Yeitch, p. 127). 

Having concluded that God is, he sets himself to 
describe what He is. For that is already given in the 
conception of a perfect Being. He must possess all 
kinds of perfection. He is absolute truth, veracity, 
and this ultimate conception guarantees everything. 
I may trust my presentations, my clear and distinct 
ideas, and may come to a true knowledge of things. 
What is clearly and distinctly apprehended is true. 
Descartes started with that persuasion ; now, having 
proved, as he thinks, the perfection of God, he rests 
certainty on that foundation. Why do we need this 
additional guarantee ? Descartes desired a guarantee 
of sufficient breadth and validity to guarantee the 
whole system of knowledge, and this he found in the 
idea of God. If we are to obtain knowledge of 
reality in its wholeness and completeness, then clear- 
ness and distinctness of perception needs to be supple- 
mented. 

This becomes more clear as we follow Descartes in 
the treatment of the problem of truth and error. How 
is error possible ? We ought to remark that Descartes 
deals only with one kind of error — intellectual error. 
Moral or physical evil is not touched by him. The 
argument as conducted by him would seem to rule out 



84 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

the possibility of error. We cannot seek the source of 
error in God, nor in the nature of our conceptions. As a 
matter of fact, we are often in error, — how ? All error, 
he says, is self-deception. The possibility of error 
turns on the distinction between understanding and 
will. If we were compelled to affirm every true pro- 
position and to deny every false one we should do so, 
and we could not err. But understanding is passive, 
and will is active. Error arises from our inclination. 
It is rather difficult to define understanding and will, 
as these are used by Descartes. He held that every 
true and distinct perception must of necessity have 
God for its author, and must be true. From this point 
of view truth is eternal, not dependent on the finite 
will : it flows from the eternal nature of God. If this 
be so, it follows that error can be explained only by 
reference to the active power which exists along with 
understanding. He looks at the understanding as 
limited, and at will as unlimited. He regarded it as 
the only faculty, so great that he could not conceive 
a greater. We are in this position — that the source 
of error is not in the understanding, because it is 
dependent on God, and cannot be deceptive. But 
the will also is dependent on God, for he expressly 
states that " it is this faculty pre-eminently by reason 
of which I believe I am created in the image of God/' 
It is through the interaction of the two that error 
arises. If the will in its action were to limit itself 
to the sphere of clear and distinct ideas, or if it were 
constrained to act only in the light of reason, error 
would not be possible. The will affirms this to be true 
where it has no evidence of its truth. I make a 
judgment on insufficient grounds, and I err ; I make an 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 85 

affirmation to others on insufficient grounds, and I 
deceive them. The mind conforms to truth only 
when it confines itself to judgments based on clear 
and distinct knowledge. But the will is free, and 
makes groundless assertions. The liability to error is 
grounded also in the limited character of my under- 
standing. If knowledge were perfect we should not 
err, and if will were altogether rational we should 
not err; error arises therefore from imperfect know- 
ledge, combined with the action of an arbitrary 
will. 

It is of interest to note, that as formerly Descartes 
made the essence of mind to consist in thinking, so 
here in the explanation of the possibility of error he 
really makes mind to be pure will or self-determination. 
This has an important bearing on the Cartesian idea of 
God, or what God is. The will of God is not deter- 
mined by any end or law. " Quantum ad arbitrii 
libertatem, longe alia ejus ratio in deo, quam in nobis ; 
repugnat enim Dei voluntatem non f uisse ab seterno in- 
differentem ad omnia quae facta sunt, aut unquam fient, 
quia nullum bonum, vel verum, nullumve credendum, 
vel faciendum, vel omittendum fingi potest, cujus idea 
in intellectu divino prius fuerit, quam ejus voluntas se 
determinant ad efficiendum ut id tale esset : Neque hie 
loquor de prioritate temporis, sed ne quidem prius fuit 
ordine, vel natura, vel ratione ratiocinata, ut vocant, 
ita scilicet ut ista boni idea impulerit Deum ad unum 
potius quam aliud eligendum. Nempe, exempli causa, 
non ideo voluit mundum creare in tempore, quia vidit 
melius sic fore, quam si creasset ab aeterno : nee voluit 
tres angulos trianguli aaquales esse duobus rectis, quia 
cognovit aliter fieri non posse, etc. Sed contra, quia 



86 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

voluit muiiduni creare in tempore, ideo sic melius est, 
quam si creatus fuisset ab seterno : et quia voluit tres 
angulos trianguli necessario sequales esse duobus rectis, 
idcirco jam hoc verum est, et fieri aliter non potest, 
atque ita de reliquis" (Resp. Sextce, 160, 161). 

Even the necessary truths that constitute reason he 
regards as springing from God's determination. It 
does not spring from the nature of intelligence as such, 
that there should be eternal truths involved in its 
very structure. So we may not argue from intelli- 
gence to the nature of intelligence as such ; for our 
intelligence is due not to the intelligence of God — it is 
due to His determination. It was part of his work to 
show that there were clear and distinct ideas in the 
human mind ; it was open to him to affirm that these 
belonged to intelligence as such, and were constituent 
elements of mind whether human or divine. But his 
doctrine of self-determination as the very essence of 
mind makes it impossible for us to speak at all of the 
characteristics of reason as such. 

Reason or self-consciousness declares that it is of its 
very essence that it has in its possession eternal truths 
which are constitutive of reason as such, and that it 
may make universal propositions true everywhere and 
always, and of every grade of being. It turns out, 
however, that this is a mistake, for truth is something 
added to reason, and united to it in quite an external 
manner by the arbitrary will of God. The innate 
ideas which he showed to us as involved in the very 
nature of thinking, and which he used to distinguish 
those ideas derived from the nature of the thinking- 
faculty from those which have another source, turn 
out to have only a limited universality and necessity. 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 87 

What Descartes needed was a proof that these truths 
were such that they were involved in the very nature 
of a self-conscious being. That ought to have been the 
conclusion, and, looking at his argument in itself, it is 
the conclusion. But here we are taught that by sheer 
determination God declares that necessity should attach 
to truth. Necessary truth has been determined for us, 
and there can be no escape from the conclusion that the 
necessity is purely relative to us, and has no place in 
the nature of things. 

It is difficult to harmonise all that Descartes has 
written on the relations between understanding and 
will, whether in God or in us. At one time he speaks 
as if mind were pure thinking, at another time as if it 
were pure will and activity. At one time truth seems 
to spring from divine action, and that God does not act 
from reasons. Again, he speaks as if God may have 
reasons or actions, but these are inscrutable to man. 
" I must not be surprised if I am not always capable of 
comprehending the reasons why God acts as He does." 
That is one statement; it is another which is in the 
extract quoted above, to the effect that necessary truths 
spring from God's determination and do not precede it. 
In the one case he affirms ignorance of the reasons of 
the divine action ; in the other, he affirms that he knows. 
Still, the causes of error arise when we treat the 
obscure and indistinct as if they were clear and 
distinct, or if we treat the unknown and unknowable 
as if they were known and knowable. There are in- 
numerable things in the power of God which transcend 
the grasp of the mind of man, but this affirmation has 
not kept Descartes from making the statement that in 
the making and conserving of things God does not act 



88 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

for reasons. Quite in keeping with this inconsistency 
is the statement regarding final causes, which is thrown 
in somewhat gratuitously in the fourth Meditation. 
The teleological explanation of things he thinks to be 
erroneous. " I am convinced that the whole class of 
final causes can have no place in the explanation of 
nature, for it seems to me to be temerity to inquire 
into the purpose of God." Yet this has not hindered 
Descartes in other instances from using the clue of 
final cause in order to reach the meaning of certain 
mechanisms of nature. He believed in the circulation 
of the blood, on the same ground as Harvey did — that 
so provident a cause as nature would not, without a 
purpose, have set all these valves in one direction. 
He, like Bacon, declared final causes to be unknowable ; 
Spinoza declared them to be impossible ; and the history 
of modern philosophy declares the fatal consequences of 
this conclusion. 

While Descartes did contribute something of worth 
to the argument for the being of God, yet when we 
inquire into what God is, we find that his method and 
its results have not added anything to the illustration 
of the character of God. The ethical postulate of His 
veracity is not regarded so much for any inherent 
worth it may have, as for the usefulness it has for the 
working of the system of Descartes. Then the exclu- 
sion of final cause from the scheme of things shuts us 
out from any knowledge of God to be gathered from 
nature, from history, or from the life of man. In 
truth, the principle of causality, as conceived by Des- 
cartes, made the use of purpose useless and unjustifiable. 
For, remember that for him mind and matter are 
absolute opposites. But God is the cause of both. 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 89 

How ? God contains in Himself eminenter all that is 
in mind, but only formaliter all that is in matter. God 
is mind ; He is only the creator of matter. In truth, by 
the very abstractness of the conceptions of mind and 
body they can never come into relation to one another, 
yet it is only in relation to one another that they have 
a meaning. Cause, also, is looked on by Descartes as 
something working from without, a mere external 
connection. It took a long period of reflection to 
arrive at a rational conception of cause, and to see 
that it is only in relation to change that it has a 
meaning. But to dwell on that would lead us too far 
afield. 

Apart from these difficulties, Descartes believed that 
in our consciousness of God he had found a principle 
on which he could found not only subjective certainty, 
but also objective fact. If he left unclear the relation 
of God to finite mind and to the world, he still thought 
that in regarding God as cause of all things he had 
found a working principle. The character of God as 
cause, seeing that God is truth, guaranteed the truth 
of our valid experiences. The relation of cause and 
effect was, from one point of view, the relation between 
God and the world. But this relation inevitably led 
again to the conception of God as will, and to the con- 
ception of Him as pure determination. But the relation 
of cause and effect is not sufficient for all the purposes 
of the Cartesian system. For the contents of our ideas 
must be capable of arrangement in a system, and in a 
system which can be understood. He had himself 
endeavoured to begin with the simplest, most clear and 
distinct, and most comprehensive of all ideas, and from 
them set forth in systematic fashion the consequences 



90 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

that followed. But is this link of connection that of 
cause and effect ? Apparently Descartes thought so, 
or rather, he seems not to have distinguished the rela- 
tion of cause and effect from that of reason and conse- 
quent. Cartesianism did in the long run identify the 
two, and Descartes went far in the same direction. 
God as cause might be regarded as pure will, but this 
is insufficient if the world of experience is to be 
explained from the principle of ground and con- 
sequence. On this last principle it would be necessary 
to look at God as mainly intelligence, or the principle 
by which the world is to be intelligently explained as 
a system. In any case, the difficulty remained for the 
Cartesian philosophy of passing from the simplicity of 
the divine nature to the manifoldness of the world. 
If God is the sum of all perfection, how can we explain 
the manifoldness and imperfection of the finite ? By 
what process, too, are we to arrive at the imperfection 
and finiteness of the world ? To such questions as 
these, Cartesianism had no answer. 

To explain the world from the principle of reason 
and consequent we are led to look at God as the 
ground and reason of all existence, and this is one of 
the positions of Descartes. To explain the world from 
the principle of cause and effect leads us to think of 
God as power, as will, as activity. This also is found 
in Descartes. He, indeed, passes from one to the other, 
for he desires to regard the will of God as a rational 
will. But the exclusion of purpose, and the refusal to 
seek for the divine meaning of the world, had its 
influence on the Cartesian system. It may be asked, 
What was that system ? He set it forth in various 
plans, and from various points of view. He is much 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 91 

concerned with first principles, and he dwells at great 
length on First Cause, the ground of all existence. 
Metaphysics or theology — for either name might 
adequately describe it — was the subject to which he 
gave most attention. But he gave attention also to the 
description of consciousness. Still this description by 
no means covers the same ground as that marked out 
as the province of psychology. 



CHAPTEE V 

The two Sides of the Cartesian Philosophy — Mechanism — Animal 
Automatism — Huxley — Soul and Body — Parallelism or Inter- 
action ? — Passion — Freedom — A conscious Automaton — Sensa- 
tion and Passion — Teleology — Modern Forms of the Cartesian 
Doctrine — Dr. Ward. 

The method of Descartes has led us to the positions 
already described. It has brought us face to face with 
questions and difficulties which he raised and did not 
solve. He had led us through doubt to the indubitable, 
and through the certainty of the consciousness of self 
to the certainty of the consciousness of God, and to 
the further certainty, through trust in the divine ver- 
acity, to the assurance of the truth of our primary 
experiences. But the question arose, whether we may 
trust the picture of the universe presented to us by 
consciousness, and believe it to be a true likeness ? We 
cannot trace here the various problems raised by this 
ideal postulate, nor inquire into its subsequent history. 
It leads us to the critical idealism of Kant, and straight 
to the idealism which holds the field so largely in the 
philosophical schools of Britain and America. 

But there is another side to the Cartesian philosophy 
— a side which is definitely related to the mechanical 
theory of the universe, and to the conclusion that all 
the phenomena of the universe are explicable in terms 

92 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 93 

of matter and motion. If critical idealism can be traced 
to Descartes, it is equally certain that modern material- 
ism has its roots in his system. The dualism of the 
Cartesian system has been the source of a deeper 
dualism, — to wit, the dualism that subsists between 
the idealist and the mechanical schools of thought. 
Mind is substance which has thinking as its sole 
attribute : matter is substance which has extension 
and does not think. How are we to establish a rela- 
tionship between the two ? As a matter of fact, the 
two are in relation or in union with one another in 
the organism of soul and body. But from the point 
of view of mind or of matter the union is inexplicable, 
that is, on the definitions of these as given by Descartes. 
The difficulty is increased as we follow Descartes along 
the lines of description of the world of mechanism, in 
which he endeavours to explain the universe as the 
outcome of matter and motion working according to 
law. He was deeply interested in the discoveries of 
Galileo, as much as he was in the application of mathe- 
matics to figure and extension. He inferred from the 
discoveries of Galileo that the universe was to be ex- 
plained by the application of law. He assumed that 
it was intelligible. But the discovery of the circulation 
of the blood, which so impressed him that he refers to 
it again and again, led him to conclude that the human 
body was a mechanism. Thus he concludes that wher- 
ever there was extension the principle of mechanical 
law ruled. It was a great advance on the thought of 
his time, and gave to science that standing-ground on 
which it was to build its gigantic superstructure. 
Whatever may be the ultimate relationship of thought 
and fact, that is a question which may be neglected 



94 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

for the time by the worker who is mainly interested 
in the ongoing of things and in the law and method 
of their interaction. One may neglect all other ques- 
tions in order to ascertain whether the law of inverse 
squares holds of all extended matter. And one may 
refuse to think of the relation of soul and body or 
of the seat of the soul, while he is seeking to under- 
stand the principles of the circulation of the blood. 
He may conclude that mechanical laws hold good for 
mechanisms, and may rejoice in the accurate state- 
ment of these laws, without prejudice to the further 
question of the relations of these laws to purpose 
and intelligence. Thus one section, influenced by 
Descartes, followed out the impulse to mechanical 
investigation given by him, while the difficulties of 
a mechanical scheme of thought did not occur to them 
until they sought to make it a principle of exhaustive 
explanation of all experience. It was then seen that 
the antitheses of mind and matter, of soul and body, 
were not exhaustive; that these had to be discarded 
as ultimate references, and to give place to the more 
fruitful thought of the relation of subject and object 
in the unity of one experience. 

It is quite true that Descartes did not rightly appre- 
hend the principles of the circulation of the blood. He 
thought that the motion of the blood was due to the 
heat which he supposed to be generated in the heart. 
Though he was mistaken in this, yet he was right in 
regarding the circulation of the blood to be as mechan- 
ical as the working of a clock is. He applied the 
principle of mechanism as far as it was applicable. 
What are the extents and limits of mechanical explana- 
tion is another question, and whether it is ever ex- 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 95 

plicable without reference to meaning and purpose 
is one of the vexed questions of philosophy at present. 

It is true, also, that Descartes made mistakes in the 
kinds of mechanisms and in the character of the 
mechanical laws by which he endeavoured to explain 
the movements within the universe, but that does not 
interfere with the service he did in removing from 
the ongoing of things in the universe the notion of 
chance or of arbitrariness and caprice. He brought 
to the consciousness of the human mind the conviction 
that properties of things were constant, and that the 
laws of their interaction were intelligible. Necessity in 
material things is the condition of their intelligibility, 
and, rightly considered, necessity as the presupposition 
of intelligent freedom. 

It is interesting to read his endeavours to explain 
the animal functions as he would have described a 
piece of mechanism. No doubt the description of the 
particular forms of machinery may provoke a smile, 
and the search for a seat of the unextended soul, which 
has no material quality, in an extended body is some- 
what amusing ; yet, neglecting all his errors, the pro- 
cedure is strikingly like the procedure of a modern 
text-book on physiology. Professor Huxley, in the 
paper on "Animal Automatism," republished in his 
Collected Essays, describes Descartes as a great physio- 
logist, who had done for the physiology of motion and 
sensation what Harvey had done for the circulation of 
the blood. Huxley sets forth a series of propositions 
which constitute the foundation and essence of modern 
physiology, and shows that these are fully expressed 
and illustrated in the writings of Descartes. It is an 
interesting and instructive paper, illustrative not only 



96 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

of Descartes but also of Huxley. But for the main 
proposition that animals are automata, the evidence 
is far from conclusive either in the hands of Descartes 
or of Huxley. It is scarcely possible for Huxley to 
state a scientific proposition wrongly ; in fact, he had 
a most scrupulous scientific conscience : but then, 
in the interest of the mechanical theory, he was 
in the habit of going beyond the scientific evidence. 
It is true that all science is in the way of making its 
own abstractions, and of neglecting all that does not 
concern its immediate purpose. That is one of the con- 
ditions of its success. But as soon as science makes 
its abstraction it has ceased to deal with reality as 
such : it deals only with that aspect of it which it has 
abstracted. Thus in dealing with the phenomena of 
life, physiology has abstracted from consciousness, and 
it deals with its phenomena not as these appear to the 
subject that lives, but as it appears to the abstract 
spectator looking on from without. Thus all the 
theories of sciences are only working hypotheses, — 
instruments of investigation into the nature and work- 
ing of that part of reality under consideration. It is 
illegitimate to make a working hypothesis, abstracted 
from reality for one particular purpose, the instrument 
of interpretation for reality as such. The principle of 
mechanism is good for interpretation where it applies, 
but nowhere else. 

Huxley asks : " How is it possible to imagine that 
volition, which is a state of consciousness, and as such 
has not the slightest community of nature with matter 
in motion, can act upon the moving matter of which 
the body is composed, as it is assumed to do in volun- 
tary acts ? But if, as is here suggested, the voluntary 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 97 

acts of brutes — or, in other words, the acts which they 
desire to perform — are as purely mechanical as the 
rest of their actions, and are simply accompanied by 
the states of consciousness called volition, the inquiry, 
so far as they are concerned, becomes superfluous. 
Their volitions do not enter into the chain of causa- 
tion of their actions at all " (Huxley's Collected Essays, 
vol. i. p. 241). Here we have the essence of the 
Cartesian hypothesis stated with all the lucidity of 
Professor Huxley, and with all the advantage to it 
of his superb scientific knowledge. What does it 
amount to in the case of animals ? and in the case 
of man? Simply to this, that Huxley has utterly 
neglected to look at the matter from the point of 
view of the inner nature of the animal, or of man. 
He is looking at the matter from the outside, from 
the point of view of the mechanical theory, in which 
it is fundamental that the series of changes discernible 
form a closed circuit, and are explicable only in terms 
of one another. Feelings, desires, all the phenomena 
of the inner life, do not count, and are nothing to the 
mechanical view. Leaving the teaching of Descartes 
on physics for later treatment, let us look for a little 
at the relations of soul and body as set forth by him. 
It is difficult to state the precise view which Descartes 
held as to the nature and source of sensation. For the 
view is not always expressed in the same way, or in 
the same terms. There is the mechanism of the nervous 
system, and there is some way in which that system 
is in relation with the external world. The nerves 
are capable of being stimulated, and the stimulation 
is conveyed through the body and reaches the brain, 
or one part of the brain in particular. He singles 
7 



98 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

out the pineal gland as the unitary centre to which 
all nerve currents tend, and from which they go forth. 
These currents he calls animal spirits, but their function 
is as mechanical as the machinery of a watch. They 
move as they are moved. Every stage of the process 
belongs not to mind, but to matter. He explains their 
nature and their function as simply parts of the me- 
chanism of the body. So far there is not, or, there need 
not be, any consciousness of the process. The whole 
process belongs to extension, and while he gives the 
name of sensation to the movements of the nervous 
organism, it does not appear that, regarded in this 
aspect, the mind is aware of the movements of the 
nervous system. Reflex action, in modern phrase, 
might adequately describe the process. Thus we have 
a twofold use of the name sensation. One is a state of 
consciousness, and the other is a process of change in 
the body. 

But how are these related to each other ? We can 
scarcely say. Looking at the frequent descriptions 
of the mechanism of the body, we find that the 
separate parts serve different ends. The organs of 
motion, for instance, are the muscles ; the organ of 
feeling is the heart. But how a movement may cause 
a feeling is not explained. For Descartes seems to 
avoid the problem, and in the description of the 
machinery he loses sight of the end for which the 
machinery is. He speaks of the heart and brain in 
their separate action ; he seems also to postulate a more 
subtile kind of machinery to mediate between the two. 
These seem to be the animal spirits, of which he says : 
" What, above all, is here worthy of observation is 
the generation of the animal spirits, which are like a 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 99 

very subtle wind, or rather, a very pure and vivid 
flame, which, continually ascending in great abund- 
ance from the heart to the brain, thence penetrates 
through the nerves into the muscles, and gives motion 
to all the members ; so that to account for other parts 
of the blood which, as most agitated and penetrating, 
are the fittest to compose those spirits proceeding 
towards the brain, it is not necessary to suppose any 
other cause than simply, that the arteries which carry 
them thither proceed from the heart in the most direct 
lines, and that, according to the rules of Mechanics, 
which are the same with those of Nature, when many 
objects tend at once to the same point where there is 
not sufficient room for all (as is the case with the parts 
of the blood which flow from the left cavity of the 
heart and tend towards the brain), the weaker and 
less agitated parts must necessarily be driven aside 
from that point by the stronger, which alone in this 
way reach it" (Veitch, pp. 53, 54). All our involuntary 
movements, and all the activities common to us and 
to animals, depend only on the arrangements of our 
organs and on the movements of the animal spirits, and 
these are produced, precisely as the motions of a watch 
are produced, by the uncoiling of the main-spring 
and the correlations of the wheels. 

The machine of the body is wonderful, and the 
description of it is wonderful. It is complicated, it 
is articulated together: its parts form themselves, 
place themselves into relation with each other, and 
they form a unity. The human body is one, and in 
a certain sense indivisible. The soul must therefore 
be present to the whole organism, but it may be 
specially united with one of the organs. The principal 

[L.oFC. 



ioo DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

question in relation to the two substances is, how 
movements are to become sensations and perceptions ? 
It is evident that some point of contact must be found. 
The function of the animal spirits is to transform 
movements into sensations and perceptions, and sen- 
sations and perceptions into movements. The animal 
spirits have their source of production in the heart, 
and their point of action on the organs in the brain, 
and the soul must have its seat in one or other of these 
organs. As the animal spirits act from the brain, there 
must the seat of the soul be sought for. 

Not to speak at present of the contradictions in- 
herent in this view, we proceed to follow Descartes as 
he describes the origin of the passions. The impression 
made on us becomes perceptions and motives, by the 
action of the mind on it. A feeling is instinctively 
aroused by the presentation of the object, and the will 
acts on the animal spirits, and action suitable to the 
circumstances ensues without a conscious exercise of 
volition. He gives examples of how the mind and 
body act on each other, how impressions of objects 
unite themselves in the gland which is in the centre 
of the brain, how the passions are aroused in the soul ; 
and these he regards as illustrations of the way in 
which the animal spirits carry on their proper business. 
In successive articles of the treatise De Passionibus he 
gives examples of the movements of the body which 
accompany passions, and which do not depend on the 
mind ; the main conclusion being that the origin of the 
passions can be explained in a purely mechanical way. 
The psychical character of the passions is ignored, and 
he seeks to explain their origin and nature from the 
physical side. 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 101 

What of the conflict within a man between motives 
impelling him to different lines of action ? The con- 
flict is real, but it is not understood. The conflict 
is not one which has its origin and character within 
the mental nature of man ; it is simply the meeting 
of movements in opposite directions, which somehow 
touch the organ of the soul : one comes from the body 
through the agency of the animal spirits, the other 
from the soul through the will. "Attamen potest 
adhuc quidam conflictus concipi, in eo, quod ssepe 
eadem causa, quae excitat in anima aliam passion em, 
excitet etiam quesdam motus in corpore, ad quos anima 
nihil confert, et quos sistit aut sistere conatur quam 
primum eos observat. Ut experientia constat, cum id 
quod excitat metum, efncit quoque ut spiritus ingredi- 
antur musculos qui inserviunt movendis cruribus ad 
f ugiendum : et ut voluntas audacise exercenda), eos 
sistat " {Be Passionibus, Art. xlvii.). 

There is a real conflict, but what are the powers 
in conflict ? Is it a conflict between the higher and 
lower nature of the soul, between reason and desire, 
between the conscience and feeling ; is it, in short, a 
conflict within the soul at all ? or is it a result of 
the opposite qualities of mind and body, between 
mechanical necessity and the freedom of the will ? 
There can be no doubt as to the answer of Descartes. 
The conflict is a consequence of the disparity between 
mind and matter. The mind, the essential quality of 
which is freedom, must realise that freedom, but it 
is united to a body which is altogether subject to 
mechanical law, and what comes from the body must 
from its very nature be opposed to the mind. The 
mind must subdue the passions, so Descartes says, 



102 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

and it is not clear how it is possible on these 
terms. 

It is not necessary to discuss further the treatise 
on the passions, for in the foregoing section we have 
found the essential part of Descartes' view. The 
rest of the treatise may be regarded as illustration 
of the fundamental thesis. It may be remarked, how- 
ever, that the possibility of a conflict in man is a 
testimony to the worth and dignity of man. It is 
the possession of self-certainty and freedom that 
makes it possible for man to combat the passions 
arising from the mechanical movements of the body, 
or within the body. It needs understanding and will 
on the one hand, as it needs motion on the other, to 
produce a struggle. Passions arise in man, who 
possesses or unites body and mind in himself. For 
in man alone is there a union of a body with a mind. 
Animals have not understanding and will. They move 
as they are moved, for without self-consciousness there 
is no mind, no thought, no soul. Animals are auto- 
mata. Here we see the importance of the Cartesian 
doctrine of the passions. The animals have no pas- 
sions, for the passions become such only in virtue of 
the opposition of the mind to the mechanical move- 
ments initiated by the animal spirits. But in animals 
there is no opposition. True, they appear to have 
sensations and impulses ; but sensations and impulses, 
whether in animal or in man, are regarded by 
Descartes as mechanical. So animals are automata. 
They feel, see, and hear, hunger and thirst, but they 
have no clear and distinct knowledge, and they can 
therefore have no soul. Descartes is thus driven to 
the conclusion that sensations and impulses even in 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 103 

man are purely mechanical, and have nothing in 
common with psychical activities. Hence the import- 
ance which Descartes attaches to the passions. They 
are the signal witnesses which attest the reality of the 
union between mind and body. And as such they have 
their importance. 

The difficulty is how to conceive a relationship 
between mind active in thought and volition, and 
matter regarded as merely extended and inert. 
Animals had no activity of thought and volition, 
and therefore the application of the conception of 
mechanism was sufficient to account for all the pheno- 
mena of animal life. They were automata. But 
intelligence and volition offered a point of resistance 
to the reign of mechanism, and mind was a clear and 
distinct idea, and was real. The inexplicable blending 
of mind and matter in the organic man left no resource 
for Descartes but to bring in a new conception of a 
unity of both, in which consciousness was reduced 
to a minimum. This reduction to a minimum was 
necessary, because mechanism could not be dispensed 
with. It was awkward, certainly, that he had 
regarded mind as the one primary certainty, and 
mental activity as assured. But in the confused union 
of mind and body anything might happen. Still, it 
was because of the intellectual and voluntary activity 
of man that he was a conscious automaton, and for 
the lack of such activity that the animal was a mere 
automaton. Mind or spirit he had rightly described 
by means of this intellectual and spontaneous activity. 
Sensations and other passive states became as inexplic- 
able from the side of mind as they were from the side 
of matter. The only explanation of them which he 



104 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

advanced was teleological. Thus he ran against 
another form of dualism — that between mechanism 
and teleology, a dualism which he had in another 
connection repudiated. Final causes or ends had no 
place in his scheme of thought, but sensations and 
passive states generally exist solely for the benefit of 
the composite soul and body, as indications of what 
might be hurtful or beneficial to the organism. In 
fact, the original dualism, the absolute disparity 
between mind and matter, is the fruitful mother of a 
numerous offspring of contradictions. 

Nor is he consistent in the representations which he 
makes as to the place they have, and the functions 
they perform. In the first " Meditation " sensations 
and sense perceptions are psychical facts, and are 
related to the mind. The last regards them as some- 
thing which belongs to the composite unity of mind 
and body. But in the treatise De Passionibus the 
passions alone, as we have seen, are referred to the 
union of soul and body, while sensation and impulse 
are referred to body alone. In fact, we might obtain 
support for contradictory descriptions of the nature of 
sensations from the writings of Descartes. We might 
say that sensations are unclear modifications of thought, 
or we might say that, as presentations of sense, they are 
not merely psychical, or we might say that they are 
merely bodily and mechanical, and we could produce 
evidence for any of these propositions. 

Each of these positions has its consequences for 
the presuppositions of his system. If sensations be 
purely mechanical, then the meaning and function of 
perception and feeling are unintelligible, for they can, 
on these terms, have no reality. If the human body is 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 105 

a mere machine there is no escape from the conclusion 
that what is true of animals is true of man : he is also 
an automaton. Descartes would require to restate his 
doctrine of the possibility of error, for error has its 
source and possibility in the activity of man ; but if 
there are no sensations, in the proper sense of the term, 
there are no presentations of sense, no unclear thoughts, 
nothing to be misunderstood by the will, and no error 
is possible. He must affirm the fact of sensations, and 
at the same time deny them. He can neither affirm 
nor deny them without the destruction of the most 
characteristic parts of his new philosophy. If the 
existence of sensation as a mental fact be denied, then 
the trustworthiness of consciousness is denied, and all 
the argumentation which led him through doubt to 
self -certainty vanishes. It is not necessary to elaborate 
the matter further, for the truth is that the fact of 
sensation is utterly inexplicable from the Cartesian 
standpoint. 

It is not possible within our limits to trace the 
wrestling of the Cartesian philosophy with this 
difficulty. The union between soul and body was a 
fact, but an incomprehensible fact. It cannot be 
explained from the view of matter, nor of mind, but it 
is, and it can only be produced by divine power. Mind 
does not move body, nor does body move mind, but 
movements follow volitions because God brings that to 
pass. Volitions are not causes ; they are only occasions 
for the forthputting of the divine activity, in virtue of 
which motion takes place. Thus also are explained 
the relation of sensations to ideas, the conception of 
extension, and our knowledge of bodies. This is what 
is known as Occasionalism, and it is a legitimate 



106 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

development of Cartesianism. More important and 
more lasting is the influence of Cartesianism on the 
relation of mechanism and teleology, on the various 
attempts to conceive the relation of mind and matter, 
and on the relation of the physical series of happenings 
to the psychical series. The path of philosophy is 
strewn with the wrecks of theories elaborated to 
account for the relation of the two series. Thus we 
have the doctrine of conscious automatism, which has 
been fiercely advocated by Huxley ; the double aspect 
theory, which has its living advocates, and other forms 
which space forbids to enumerate. 

In truth, the controversy is a living one, and is one 
not likely to be soon closed. On the one hand, we have 
sometimes the confession that inexplicable enigmas 
emerge, if we press the mechanical theory to its issues. 
Then we come face to face with the seven Weltrathsel 
of Du Bois-Reymond ; and these are not exhaustive. 
On the other hand, there are the physicists, with their 
belief in the efficiency of the conception of mechanism, 
and their disposition to call every view empirical until 
it appears as a deduction from a wide-reaching mathe- 
matical law. Then the fact that the conception of a 
mechanism has enabled physicists to form a conception 
of the working of the natural forces, and has given 
them command over the forces of nature, gives to 
the conception of mechanism a position almost im- 
pregnable. We shall return to this aspect of the case 
presently. 

At the same time, we desire to say that the con- 
ception of mechanism is not ultimate nor self- 
explanatory. It is useful, and valid within certain 
limits. It is also to be observed that it is by no means 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 107 

exclusive of teleology. A deeper consideration of the 
two conceptions leads us to see that teleology without 
mechanism is powerless ; that if it had no means to 
realise itself, purpose would remain in the clouds. It 
could have no hope of realisation if it did not lay hold 
of a system of efficient causes, and if it did not make it 
a mechanism for the realisation of itself. On the other 
hand, it may be observed that mechanism without a 
purpose is also without a meaning. One of tb~ deepest 
needs of our minds is that of finding the meaning of a 
mechanism. This is as much a human need as is the 
necessity for discovering the cause of a thing. In fact, 
it is the same human need looked at from different 
ends. The statement may be illustrated from the 
labours of the biologists, who under the impulse of 
Darwin are engaged in working out the theory of 
evolution. It is a pressing need for them to find the 
purpose, or the utility, and the advantage to the 
possessor of every modification of the organism. It is 
interesting and instructive to read the accounts of 
mimicry, of the causes of the colours of animals and 
birds, of the advantage in the struggle for existence of 
adaptive change. It is curious, also, that this labour 
in teleology is placed on them in the interests of a 
theory which formally has excluded teleology from 
having any influence as a real source of efficiency. 

Even if we are successful in applying generally the 
conception of mechanism to an organism, we shall 
immediately have to modify the conception of mechan- 
ism, and adapt it to the new phenomena. For an 
organism is a peculiar kind of machine. In it there 
are other phenomena than that of being moved by 
impulses from without. There is the fact of sensibility, 



108 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

which has no place in a machine properly so-called. 
In organisms we have to deal with living substances, 
and whatever may be our view of life, and however 
strenuous may be our denial of anything like vital 
force, the fact remains that living bodies have qualities 
of their own. Living bodies act in a peculiar way. 
They are able to provide for themselves stores of 
energy for the doing of their work. They have the 
por, T e~ ^intussusception. The organism sustains itself, 
repairs itself, constructs itself. It does not depend on 
external impulses for its movements; it determines, 
within limits, its own action. In a word, the inner 
nature of the organism counts for something in the 
general result. If the course of the organism is one 
that can be predicted, the prediction must be based on 
the convergence of the inner and the outer factors. To 
explain a machine, we take into account the principles 
on which it is constructed and the work it is to do. 
We look not at the machine itself for an explanation 
of it ; the materials of which it is made do not explain 
it, for the adjustment of parts, and the relation of 
whole to parts and of parts to whole, have been im- 
pressed on it from without. But in the organism the 
purpose, the intention, the explanation must be sought 
for in the inner life of the organism. The theory of 
evolution, almost in contradiction to the intention of 
its authors, has laid stress on the inner life of the 
organism, and has involuntarily demonstrated that 
the functions of the organism have determined the 
structure. 

Further, in the relation of organism to environment, 
what elements the organism may select for itself do 
not depend on the environment alone. In one square 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 109 

mile there may be thousands of organisms, and, while 
the environment may be one, the elements selected 
from the environment for the uses of the organism 
are as various as are the organisms. The organism 
selects what it needs. This is true for all life, and if 
we are to call the organism a machine we must recast 
our definition of a machine. 

If this is true regarding all life, a fortiori it is true 
regarding rational life. Descartes saw that in self- 
conscious life he had something that reacted in a 
special way against the environment. He laid stress 
on the intellectual and voluntary activity of the self 
of whose existence he was persuaded. Mental life was 
for him essentially active and independent of matter. 
In fact, this was the perplexity which troubled him ; for 
how could such intellectual and spontaneous activity 
co-exist with a world the characteristic feature of 
which was the absence of spontaneity. Sensations, 
inner states generally, were inexplicable for him, either 
from the side of matter or of mind. As we have already 
pointed out, their function was solely teleological, to 
indicate what was beneficial or hurtful. Here the 
argument cannot be carried further ; we may, however, 
refer to the best discussion on the problem with which 
we are acquainted. We refer to the masterly discussion 
on the whole question of Psychophysical Parallelism in 
the Gifford Lectures of Dr. Ward. " Every man knows 
the difference between feeling and doing, between idle 
reverie and intense thought, between impotent and 
aimless drifting and unswerving tenacity of purpose, 
being the slave of every passion and the master of 
himself. And what he finds in his own experience — 
this fundamental contrast of passivity and activity — 



no THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

he believes to be shared by all his fellow-men, nay, 
though in less developed forms, by every living thing. 
Experience in every case consists in interaction between 
individual and environment, an alternation of sensitive 
impression and motor expression, the one relatively 
passive, the other relatively active. Absolute activity 
and absolute passivity are limiting conceptions to 
which we have no answering experience, the one being 
commonly attributed to God only, and the other only 
to primeval matter. Devoid alike of creative activity 
and of the inert indifference of senseless clay, each man 
finds himself, and believes all other sentients to be, at 
once sensitive and reactive, feeling as well as receiving, 
and prompted by feeling to act. It must surely ever 
remain futile, nay, even foolish, to attempt to explain 
either receptivity or activity; for what is there in 
experience more fundamental ? And being thus funda- 
mental, the prime staple of all experience, it is absurd 
to prove them real, since in the first and foremost 
sense of reality the real and they are one. What then, 
I ask again, are we to say of the attempt to disprove 
their reality ? " (Naturalism and Agnosticism, vol. ii. 
pp. 52, 53). 



CHAPTEK VI 

Matter — Matter and Motion — Quantity of Motion — The First and 
Second Causes — Matter in abstraction from Mind — Matter 
and Extension — Professor Tait on Newton's Laws of Motion 
— Criteria of Objective Keality — Development of the Universe 
according to Natural Law — Mechanical Evolution — Diffi- 
culties connected with the System — Fruitfulness of the Main 
mechanical Conceptions of Descartes. 

It is easier to apply the principle of mechanism to 
material things than to organisms. For material things 
have no principle of self-action, they move only as they 
are moved. The postulate of physical science is that it 
is inert, and that all bodies continue in the state in 
which they are, unless they are changed by external 
force. If this be so, it is evident that the principle of 
mechanical explanation has not the difficulty to meet, 
nor the resistance to the acceptance of it, which occurs 
on the supposition that the body can move itself, and 
can direct its action from within. This is so obvious 
that it did not escape the attention of Descartes. The 
necessity of conserving the fundamental principle of 
the essential disparity of mind and matter led him to 
various devices to account for the movements of animals 
on strictly mechanical principles. But on these we do 
not dwell. 

We may, however, dwell on the manner in which he 

in 



H2 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

connects the metaphysical and physical parts of his 
philosophy. God was related to mind as the principle 
of knowledge ; how are we to conceive of the relation 
of God to matter ? In relation to bodies, God is the 
principle of motion and of rest. Motion needs, he says, 
a double cause — one universal and general, which is the 
general cause of all the motions which are in the 
world; and a particular cause, from which particular 
parts of matter may acquire the motion which they 
had not formerly had. The general cause is God, who 
created matter, along with motion and rest, at the 
beginning. The quantity of motion and rest must 
therefore remain always the same. This follows from 
the nature and perfection of God. " Intelligimus 
etiam perfectionem esse in Deo, non solum quod in 
se ipso sit immutabilis, sed etiam quod modo quam 
maxime constanti et immutabili operetur " (Principi- 
orum Phil., ii. 36). Thus from the immutability of 
God, as well as from the nature of bodies, Descartes 
concludes that the quantity of motion in the world 
is unchangeable. 

While God is the general cause of all the motion 
in the world, yet there are second causes, and these are 
also interpenetrated so by the unchangeableness of 
God that they must act regularly, and according to 
fixed rules. These laws of motion are second causes. 
Bodies are inert, and they continue in the state in 
which they are till changed by the application of some 
outward force. It is to be noticed that Descartes, in 
the subsequent part of the treatise on the principles of 
philosophy, deals only with second causes. Having 
reached the motion of second causes he deals henceforth 
with them alone. All the changes of motion in the 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 113 

world, and all the phenomena connected with these 
changes, are to be explained, not from occult causes, 
but from the interrelations of bodies of matter. This 
is the significant character of his physical philosophy. 
In whatever way he reached this conclusion, whether 
by reflection on the unchangeableness of God or by 
reflection on the properties of matter, the significant 
thing is that he sets himself to explain the changes 
of the world from mechanical principles alone. He has 
set the example, which physical philosophers have 
followed to this hour. 

He took matter in abstraction from mind. He 
assumed that he might know its properties ; and these 
properties he identified with extension, or rather ex- 
tendedness. It is quite possible to take the properties 
of matter in abstraction from mind and to make no 
reference to the innumerable questions which im- 
mediately arise in connection with the knowableness of 
matter. This is what physicists usually do, and in 
doing so they sometimes sneer at metaphysicians as they 
pass on. Here is a characteristic passage from a most 
distinguished physicist, and one of the best teachers 
ever known by the present writer. Professor Tait, in 
the opening paragraphs of his treatise on Newton's 
Laws of Motion, thus speaks : " Reason and experience 
force on all who rightly employ them the objective 
reality of the Physical Universe. It exists altogether 
independently of the senses and subjective impressions, 
by which alone a conception of it can reach our minds. 
Denial of this statement lands us at once in hopeless in- 
consistency. It is scientifically certain that the physical 
universe existed before there were any senses to per- 
ceive it, and that during these ages it would have 
8 



H4 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

produced sensuous impressions if organs of sense had 
existed. Although, therefore, it can only be conceived of 
as related to the senses, it has an existence altogether 
independent of the senses. Acceptance of this state- 
ment leads to such difficulties only as exercise the 
ingenuity of Metaphysicians. The more reckless of the 
class have denied that the physical world is real ; the 
more cautious of them have been striving to determine 
precisely what its objective reality means. Wishing 
the latter more success than they seem hitherto to 
have had, we leave the problem on their hands. The 
objective realities in the physical world are of two 
kinds only: Matter and Energy. Our conviction of 
their objectivity is based on the experimental fact that 
we cannot alter the quantity of either. In technical 
language, we therefore speak of two great General 
Laws — Conservation of Matter and Conservation of 
Energy." 

We quote this interesting passage not for criticism, 
but as an example of the attitude of mind of the 
physical philosopher. There is a certain grandeur in 
the appeal to Reason and Experience, and a splendid 
assumption in the reference to " all who rightly think " 
which are most impressive. The criteria of objective 
reality seem so simple and so obvious that at the first 
blush of it the poor metaphysician feels somewhat 
ashamed. It is scientifically certain that the universe 
existed before there were any senses to perceive it. 
Well, in a certain sense this is true, but the truth of it 
does not settle the matter. It is not quite so easy to settle 
these questions as Professor Tait seems to think. For 
even the statement, that the universe existed before 
there were any senses to perceive it, still leaves the 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 115 

question of the reference to intelligence untouched. 
For the universe then existed in relation to intelli- 
gence. The second criterion consists in the proposition, 
that the objective reality depends on our ability to 
alter or not to alter the quantity of matter or energy. 
This statement is a relative one. It is quite relevant 
as a ground for our conviction that the quantity of 
matter is something which we cannot change, but is 
that a sufficient ground for the assertion that the 
quantity of energy or of matter in the universe is 
constant and unchangeable ? The statement as to the 
conservation of matter and the conservation of energy 
is absolute, and the proof of it is experimental, limited, 
that is to say, to the quantity of matter which we can 
examine, and to the experimental means at our com- 
mand. Professor Tait would need to undertake another 
inquiry, in order to justify his procedure in extending 
the criteria of objectivity from the matter and energy 
on which he could experiment to the matter and energy 
contained in the universe. In order to do this he 
must call in the aid of the despised metaphysician. 
But the physicist is in the habit of making assumptions 
which he does not criticise, and to assume as universal 
what, on his own grounds, he cannot know or 
prove. 

For one thing, the physicist has always dealt with 
the physical world in abstraction from intelligence. 
Even if he does refer to intelligence he limits his re- 
ference to the suggestion, that it is only by the senses 
and subjective impressions that a conception of the 
universe can reach our minds. With a good deal of 
naivete, and with touching metaphysical simplicity, 
Professor Tait speaks of a conception reaching us 



n6 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

through the senses and through subjective impressions, 
never thinking of the work done by the mind ere 
impressions can reach the standard of conceptions. 
The naive realism of the physicist we must, for the 
most part, leave uncriticised here. He makes the ab- 
straction from intelligence once for all, and proceeds 
on the assumption that, as far as physics are concerned, 
his procedure is altogether objective. Let us follow 
him in his work, always carrying with us the reference 
to intelligence that is implicit in every assumption that 
he makes. 

The attitude of the physicist is precisely that of 
Descartes, so far as he deals with the physical world. 
This is his significance for modern physical thought. 
Notwithstanding the fact that in almost every section 
there are constant references to the divine action, yet 
the operative causes are really the second causes. His 
procedure is mainly deductive. Yet he occasionally ad- 
mits the necessity of an appeal to experience, or to what 
Professor Tait calls experiment. He asserts that the 
matter of all the bodies in the universe is one and the 
same, divisible into the same parts, and are divided in 
many ways, and are moved in diverse ways but always in 
such a way that the whole quantity of motions in the 
universe are conserved. "At quam magnae sint istae 
partes materise, quam celeriter moveantur, et quales cir- 
culos describant, non possum us sola ratione determinare ; 
quia potuerunt ista innumeris modis diversis a Deo 
temperari, et quemnam prse ceteris elegerit, sola ex- 
peri entia docere debet ; jam que idcirco nobis liberum est, 
quidlibet de illis assumere, modo omnia, quae ex ipso 
consequentur, cum experientia consentiant " (Prin. Phil., 
Pars. iii. sect. 46). Thus Descartes, while assuming that 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 117 

all matter is primarily one and the same, leaves room 
for experience to determine what are the actual colloca- 
tions of matter in the world, and what the character of 
its movements may be. There are limiting conceptions, 
on the one hand, that the total quantity of motion is con- 
served, and, on the other, that the primal matter is one 
and the same. 

More characteristic and more important is the con- 
ception which he throws out, that the universe might 
have developed by natural laws out of a less perfect 
primitive condition. He throws out the suggestion 
under reserve. He has the fear of the Church before 
his eyes, and concedes that the world was created 
perfect and complete, and he cautiously throws out the 
suggestion that the world might have developed by the 
action of natural laws from chaos to order. Having 
stated what the laws of nature, to which we shall 
presently return, are, he adds that from these, as causes, 
all the effects which appear in this world, according to 
the laws of nature as expounded above, can originate. 
" Et non puto alia simpliciora, vel intellectu faciliora, 
vel etiam probabiliora rerum principia posse excogitari. 
Etsi enim forte etiam ex Chao per leges Naturae, idem 
ille ordo qui jam est in rebus, deduci posset, idque olim 
susciperim explicandum ; quia tamen conf usio minus 
videtur convenire cum summa Dei rerum creatoris per- 
fections, quam proportio vel ordo, et minus distincte 
etiam a nobis percipi potest ; nullaque proportio, nul- 
lusve ordo simplicior est, et cognitu facilior, quam ille 
qui constat omnimoda sequalitate ; idcirco hie suppono 
omnes materiaa particulas, initio fuisse tarn in magni- 
tudine, quam in motu inter se sequales, et nullam in 
universo ineequalitatem relinquo, praster illam quae est 



n8 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

in situ Fixatum ; et quae unicuique coelum noctu intuenti, 
tain clare apparet, ut negafji plane non possit" (Prin. 
Phil, Pars. iii. sect. 47). ^t 

It is not of much importance to determine what the 
original state of matter was, for in virtue of the action 
of natural laws matter must pass through all the 
states which it is capable of assuming, " Si formas istas 
ordine consideremus, tandem ad illam quae est hujus 
muncli poterimus devenire : adeo ut hie nihil erroris ex 
falsa suppositione sit timendum." We have here a 
statement of the principle which lies at the basis of 
every scheme of evolution of the mechanical sort. 
From the simple to the complex, from chaos to order, 
through the operation of fixed laws, is the thought in 
his mind. Evolution from within through law is surely 
a great thought, and it describes the aim of science 
from his time to our own. So far it seems accepted 
now as the principle which guides the action of scientific 
workers in all the departments of science. Sometimes 
the simplicity is overdone, and in many cases a false 
simplicity is postulated in order to find an apparent 
progress from the simple to the complex, from the 
homogeneous to the heterogeneous. We find, for 
example, such a maxim as this, that " universally the 
effect is more complex than the cause," a reading of the 
law of causation which is possible only if we neglect 
the system of things in the case of cause, and surrep- 
titiously bring it in in connection with the effect. The 
axiom of causality postulated by Descartes is precisely 
the opposite of that which we have taken from the writ- 
ings of Mr. Herbert Spencer. Cause with Descartes has 
in itself all perfections, and w r hile it is equal to the 
production of the effect it is not exhausted by the 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 119 

production of the effect. The method of procedure is 
deductive from cause to effect. He is aware of the 
objection that may arise from the consideration of the 
possible multiplicity of causes, for this effect may have 
been produced by this or that cause. He is aware, 
also, of the necessity of experience and experiment, but 
the experiments are so numerous and so costly that 
they could be carried out only by the co-operation 
of many men. 

His conception of matter also placed difficulties in 
his way. The only properties of matter recognised by 
him are those of extension, divisibility, and mobility ; 
and he burdened himself by attempting to explain the 
phenomena of nature from these alone. There are 
properties of matter which cannot be reduced to these 
three. It is something in his favour that, notwith- 
standing the fact that he made space to be the funda- 
mental property of matter, he yet did arrive at 
something like the true conception of inertia, and 
stated the first law of motion in terms not unlike those 
which were used by Newton. All changes in the out- 
ward world are due to the operation of forces operating 
on matter from without the particular body to be 
moved. "Every particular body, so far as in it lies, 
perseveres in the same state, whether of motion or of 
rest." " Prima est, unamquamque rem, quatenus est 
simplex et indivisa, manere quantum in se est in eodem 
semper statu, nee unquam mutari nisi a causis externis " 
(Prin. Phil., ii. 37). Resistance to change is thus the 
fundamental property of matter, and all matter has 
this property. The greater the number of parts there 
is in a body, the greater is its resistance to 
change. He calls the quantity of parts the mass, the 



120 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

amount of motion the velocity, and the product of 
the mass into the velocity is the measure of force. 
His second law of nature is, that every moving body 
moves in a straight line. There is no empty space. 
And therefore every moving body must come into 
contact with other bodies. He distinguishes seven 
cases in which bodies come into collision, and from 
these he formulates seven rules according to which the 
changes resulting from collision will take place. It is 
not necessary to enumerate these, for the main thing 
is that, according to him, the quantity of motion 
always remains the same, and therefore the mass and 
the velocity vary in inverse proportion to one another. 
Every body which causes another to move must lose as 
much of its own motion as it communicates to that body. 
Into the further details of the mechanical system of 
Descartes it is not necessary to enter. The identifica- 
tion of matter and space, the supposition of a plenum 
or of a space which is full of matter, necessarily led to 
the supposition that motion was determined by impact 
alone. It necessarily led to the supposition, also, that 
the movements of fluid bodies could not be explained 
by those laws which sufficed for the explanation of 
hard and solid bodies. For him space is extension, and 
extension is the property of an extended thing, and 
where there is extension there is also matter. There 
can be no limit to the material world either in the way 
of a maximum or a minimum. For there is no limit to 
space as a whole, and there is no limit to the divisibility 
of matter. Any change within matter is a change of it 
from place to place ; every change, therefore, is due to 
motion, and takes place according to the laws of motion. 
These laws are deduced from the conception of the 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 121 

unehangeableness of God, from the assumption that 
the sum of motion communicated to the universe at 
the creation remains unaltered during its conservation. 
Conservation he regards as continued creation. While 
the quantity of motion remains constant, the distribu- 
tion of it may vary in space and time, but no motion is 
lost and none can begin anew. 

From this it is obvious that Descartes found that the 
principles with which he starts in his philosophy of 
nature were too few, too simple, and too abstract for 
the upbuilding of a world. What he does prove, if he 
proves anything at all, is that the divine power at 
work in the world is constant, and the quantity of 
motion as something constant is derived from the sup- 
position that the divine power is constant. On the 
Cartesian principle, there is nothing to hinder the 
notion that, at some stage of the world's history, there 
might be a new f orthputting of divine power ; and if 
there were such, the quantity of motion might also be 
increased. For on the Cartesian hypothesis the divine 
power is not exhausted by the quantity of motion in 
the world. Thus the proof of the quantity of motion 
in the world as constant would lead inevitably to the 
conception that the making of the world exhausted 
the power of God, or to the identification of God with 
the world. Some way must be found to identify the 
divine action with the actual outcome of it in the world, 
so that it could not be increased or diminished. Here, 
however, we are evidently engaged with considerations 
bearing on metaphysics and theology, and not on 
physics. 

Physically, too, the system of Descartes is threatened 
with bankruptcy at every turn. He cannot explain the 



122 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

physical state called rest, he cannot relate it rationally 
to motion, or motion to it. He needs a miracle at every 
moment to keep things moving, for it is not the quantity 
of motion that is constant, it is energy. This was seen 
by Leibniz; and his doctrine, which is also that of 
Newton, has found its highest expression in the law of 
the Conservation of Energy. This is now the accepted 
conclusion of physics and chemistry, and forms a 
criterion of the validity of every physical conclusion. 
Vis viva, not the quantity of motion, is the amendment 
of Leibniz ; and it has this advantage, that for the 
demands of physical theory we must not go beyond 
the sphere of physics. Theological considerations are 
out of court in physics, which must be allowed to 
proceed on its own path, to its own goal unhindered 
and unhampered by considerations derived from other 
spheres of thought. Physics has a right to its own 
method, its own assumptions, its own axioms, and its 
own conclusions — only, let it recognise that these are 
valid only within the sphere of physics. 

Looking away from the theological reasons which 
are set forth by Descartes as the formal reasons for his 
assertion of the constancy of action in the world, we 
must recognise that the general laws of nature formu- 
lated by him were a great advance on what had gone 
before. It was something to establish the law of 
inertia, in however imperfect a form. It was some- 
thing gained to invite men to account for changes 
within the world by causes always in action, and acting 
regularly and constantly. This was the great contri- 
bution of Lyell to the geological theory, that the causes 
now in operation were also the causes that had been 
in action through all geologic time. It is the first 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 123 

principle of science, and theology and philosophy are 
as much interested in the acceptance of it as science is. 
Hooker and Bntler established this claim for theology : 
only, many have not seen it, or have ignored it. 

Though based on wrong data and inexactly stated, 
yet the recognition of something constant in the world, 
and that force is needed to change of state of a body, 
and that unimpeded motion is in a straight line, implied 
that the explanation of nature must not appeal to 
occult or mysterious powers, that the changes of nature 
are really exchanges. Yet this claim has its limits. 
For one thing, physics must not make its method 
universal; it must not think that it can solve all 
problems by an extension of the physical method. 
This attempt was, as we have seen, made by Descartes ; 
it is made to-day in many quarters. Quantitative rela- 
tions are not everything, even in physics. There are 
differences in matter, though it is true of matter in all 
its forms that it is subject to the law of gravitation. 
The fact of energy is due to the differences in state and 
position between one kind of matter and another. In 
other words, matter has not that simplicity attributed 
to it by Descartes. It has qualities or properties which 
cannot be brought under the characters of extension, 
divisibility, and mobility. Here he proceeds, not by 
analysis, but by abstraction, and when he limits matter 
to extended substance he is simply attributing reality 
to an abstraction, and is as scholastic as any schoolman. 
Nor did he make a critical examination of the qualities 
of matter in order to prove that the primary qualities 
are not as subjective as he thought the secondary 
qualities to be. 

What are the fewest and simplest assumptions, 



124 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

which, being given, will also explain for us the whole 
of nature ? It would almost seem that Descartes had 
asked himself this question, and that his system is the 
answer. From the simplest and most intelligible 
phenomena to the more recondite and the less intellig- 
ible, that is his procedure. To explain the distant and 
the unknown by the near and the known is surely 
a wise procedure. This he endeavoured to do. He 
found that it was conducive to clearness and precision 
of thought to think of movements as the motion of 
parts of a machine. In this notion he was not alone. 
Lord Kelvin, for example, tells us that he is never sure 
that he understands anything till he has made a model 
of it. Descartes, too, liked to make models and dia- 
grams of things, and the diagrams in the work on 
the Principles of Philosophy are full of interest. 

On them, however, we need not dwell. Matter and 
motion arose simultaneously, and the matter of the 
universe was supposed to be in motion about fixed 
centres. These centres were in comparative rest, and 
the larger masses as they whirled round came into 
contact, and friction arose. With friction smaller parts 
were rubbed of, and collected at the centres. Thus the 
larger bodies might be conceived to become larger, and 
the smaller become less. Thus the smaller bodies 
might lose their independent action, be carried into 
the eddies which lay between the larger bodies. In 
this way he explained the position of the earth, and 
was able to say that the earth was at rest, though he 
believed that it moved round the sun. By this theory 
of vortices he sought to explain many of the properties 
of matter, and did so to his own satisfaction. 

After all drawbacks, it contains the germ of the 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 125 

mechanical theory of the universe. Taken up by 
Newton with larger knowledge and deeper insight, 
it advanced through Kant and Laplace till, in many 
quarters, it is the accepted theory of the hour. Huxley 
is justified in making the claim on behalf of Descartes, 
that he is the father of the modern mechanical view of 
the universe. There is no doubt that it has been a 
successful working hypothesis. It has enabled one to 
have a firm grasp of the great thought of the unity 
of the universe. It was something to be able to say 
that all matter attracts all matter directly as the masses, 
and inversely as the square of the distance. All matter 
gravitates, whatever be its state or temperature. It 
was something also to be able to say that matter is one 
in the fixed stars and on the earth ; and many other 
conclusions have followed, the chief being that the 
universe is one system, existing in one space and 
in one time. 

On the other hand, there are many things which 
prove that the world is not a mere mechanical system. 
It is a world with life in it, with intelligence in it, and 
the system of the world is one which needs a wider 
unity than can be reached on a mechanical theory. 
Mechanism itself needs to be explained. In fact, the 
mechanical view needs to be supplemented even in 
the physical world. Descartes erred on account of the 
excessive simplicity of the principles he assumed as 
laws of nature. It may be said that modern physics 
errs in the same way. We take up a book of mathe- 
matics or dynamics, and we find ourselves in a very 
intelligible world, a world of validity in certain direc- 
tions, but it is an abstract world. We begin with 
points which have position but no magnitude, lines 



126 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

which have length without breadth, surfaces which 
have no depth, and we deal with these abstractions 
according to logical laws. We are conscious all the 
time that these have no counterparts in the world of 
real objects, and we make allowances when we apply 
our mathematics to the world of objects. 

We pass to the world of motion and we begin with 
abstraction again. We represent forces by lines. We 
make our laws of motion, and we deal with matter 
as if it were altogether inert, moving only as it is 
moved. Yet all the while we know that energy arises 
out of the inter-relations of matter, and is constantly 
associated with matter. We take the greatest possible 
liberties with the problems set to us by the inter- 
relations of matter. We postulate perfectly rigid 
levers, fulcrums that will not yield in the slightest 
degree, and work out our calculations with these 
abstract aspects of things. It is wonderful that we 
have been so successful in our endeavour to think 
out the order of the world. Think of what the 
physicist neglects. Read the treatises on the dynamics 
of a particle, and what wonderful constructions they 
are ; and yet the particle has only one property, namely, 
the capacity of being moved. It is the aim of the 
physicist to express all the relations of matter in the 
abstract forms which he has himself thought out, and 
which he has expressed in a form with which he can 
work. Is there not too much simplicity in our 
formulas ? Descartes abstracted from matter all its 
qualities, and sought to explain the world of matter 
from extension, divisibility, and mobility. Is there 
much difference between this attempt and the attempt 
to deduce material phenomena from the play of inertia 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 127 

involved in the motion of a structureless primordial 
fluid ? It is the snare of the physicist to reduce the 
manifoldness of nature to a simple unity of scheme. 
Their goal is, it is so set forth by some of them, to 
discover the dynamical laws of the relations of matter, 
and fully to express them in terms of number, space, and 
time. They hope to be able to make all physical pheno- 
mena such as may be expressed in pure mathematics. 

It is remarkable, also, that those who thus express 
their hope and endeavour are precisely those who lay 
stress on experiment, and who affirm that it is from 
experience and experiment alone that a knowledge of 
nature is to be obtained. It is most interesting to 
read the writings of physicists when they ride their 
theoretical hobby, and note their hope of finding a 
mathematical formula wide enough to express the 
law of the universe. It is more interesting to read 
accounts of the scientific work of these men in the 
laboratory, to note the care, the precision, the exact- 
ness of their methods, their determination to see 
nothing but what is there, and to state exactly what 
they observe. We read their works as they describe 
the process by which they discover argon, helium, 
and other elements of matter, and describe for us 
the unique characters of these elements. It looks 
as if we were in the company of two sets of men. 
But they are one. Only, the one is dealing with 
abstractions, and the other is dealing with concrete 
reality. Rather, it is the same man in two moods. 
May we not say that there is a double movement of 
science, — one to the finding of wider and wider laws, 
another to more and more definite description of 
particulars ? 



128 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

We may make another remark : that the hope of 
the mathematician that he will find the ultimate data 
of the physical universe to be number, matter, space, 
and time is a most touching instance of his faith in 
the intelligibility of the universe. He has found that 
he can think most clearly when he expresses himself 
in mathematical formulas. They are to him what clear 
and distinct ideas are to Descartes, and we need not 
blame him if he hopes to translate concrete matter 
into mathematical formulas. There are, however, other 
forms of reasoning perhaps more adequate to the 
problem. It may truly be said of Descartes that he 
transformed the problem of philosophy and set it 
anew for subsequent thinkers. He demanded the 
removal of all presuppositions. Accept nothing that 
may be questioned, and, if questioned, can still be 
established by a clear necessity of thought. Then 
he set up the principle of self-consciousness, the pure 
Ego, as the principle of certainty, and affirmed its ex- 
istence as the principle of knowledge and of being. 
He brought into clear consciousness the opposition 
of being and thought, of mind and matter, of con- 
sciousness and existence, and thus set to philosophy 
the problem of their existence and of their relation. 
But he failed to carry out the principle of his method, 
and he, contrary to his own method, accepted, without 
adequate analysis, the substance of mind, the substance 
of body as given. The concept of substance he finds 
ready to hand, and, without further investigation, 
accepts it as the corner-stone of his system. The 
three substances — self, matter, God — he accepts un- 
critically and, it might be said, empirically. Then 
he defines mind and body in such a way as to make 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 129 

any rational relationship between them impossible. 
They are only united as a matter of fact, but the 
fundamental dualism remains unreconciled. But he 
set the world a-thinking, and the answers to the 
questions he raised form the history of modern 
philosophy. 



CHAPTER VII 

Problems of the Cartesian Philosophy — The Place of Malebranche 
— Spinoza — His Personality — The Poetry of his System — His 
Character — His People — The Aim of his Philosophy — His Birth 
— His Training — The Influences which moulded him — Separa- 
tion from Judaism — Friends and Correspondents — Residence 
at Rhynsburg and at Amsterdam — His Works — His Manner 
of Life — His Death. 

Descartes raised many questions and gave occasion to 
many problems, the answers to which and the solutions 
of which he did not see or foresee. He left unclear the 
relation of will and understanding, the relation of soul 
to body, and the relation of God to both ; in fact, he 
left to his successors a legacy of unsolved problems 
closely connected with the fundamental principles of 
his philosophy. For one thing, his definition of the 
nature of mind and of the nature of body made it 
impossible that there should be any interaction between 
them. As soon as his successors grappled with this 
problem they saw this result, and Cordemoy and Geu- 
lincx stated this conclusion frankly, while the latter drew 
the further conclusion that the changes of mind and body 
were also inexplicable. It is not our purpose to trace 
the development of Occasionalism, though it was the in- 
evitable outcome of the principles of Cartesianism. Nor 
can we trace the application of Cartesian principles to 

130 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 131 

the special problems of the intercourse of soul and body, 
of the relation of understanding and will, nor to any- 
other of the special problems arising directly out of 
the Cartesian principles. The development which these 
principles received from Malebranche is interesting in 
itself, and has some significance in the history of 
human thought, but we must pass it by. Simply to 
state the outcome of the speculation of Malebranche 
would be unsatisfactory, while to describe it adequately 
would far exceed our limits. So we simply say that 
Malebranche applied the principles of the Cartesian 
philosophy to a number of particular problems, and 
prepared the way for a more incisive examination 
of them. We seem to be able to see the full meaning 
of principles only when we have drawn out the con- 
sequences that flow from the complete acceptance of 
them and the application of them to all relevant 
problems. This is one of the functions of Malebranche 
in the evolution of the Cartesian philosophy, and he 
has done it well. 

We shall endeavour to trace the attempt to develop 
the Cartesian principles and to make them a complete 
representation of existence. This was the work of 
Spinoza, one of the most interesting of human figures 
and one of the most fascinating of thinkers. His 
works are not only a philosophy — they are also works 
of art ; one might say, looking away from the form of 
them, and looking only to their spirit, they are poetry. 
They must be judged accordingly. If we look merely 
to the form of his works, or to the speculative prin- 
ciples of which they are the expression, we must ex- 
press on them a judgment of their inadequacy; if we 
read ourselves into the poetry which lies within them 



132 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

we shall find ourselves so far in sympathy with Goethe, 
Schleiermacher, and others who were penetrated with 
the spirit of the wholeness of the whole which is the 
essence of the system of Spinoza. One can hardly 
read Spinoza in cold blood: his spirit penetrates us; 
we feel the influence of his spiritual energy, and, pro- 
test as we may, we are carried away by the current of 
his thought, and we find ourselves attempting to give 
a meaning to his system which will not contradict our 
own fundamental principles. There is the terrible 
earnestness of the man, his serious endeavour to find 
unity in thought and in things ; there is his tremendous 
purity, which is ever present to the reader. There 
comes in the later books of the Ethics the time when 
the stream overflows its boundaries, and the mere 
abstract substance with its two manifested attributes 
seems to pass into the background, and a being not 
unlike the Jehovah of the Hebrews takes its place, 
and we find that it is not unreasonable to be penetrated 
with the intellectual love of God. 

Again, as we near the end of this wonderful book, 
a higher ideal of man seems to emerge; how we can 
hardly tell, yet a figure of man appears which seems 
to have a transcendent worth, and has some kind of 
immortality, — something which seems to transcend 
space and time, and to need eternity for the realisation 
of man. No one can read the last three books of the 
Ethics without emotion of the most piercing kind, nor 
can they be read without the conviction that Spinoza, 
the man and the Hebrew, has so far parted company 
with the philosopher, the mere abstract thinker and 
the man of speculative thought, and that the spirit of 
the Hebrew people within him has gotten the victory. 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 133 

Spinoza is one of many instances of the influence on 
thought of the principle of cross-fertilisation. We may- 
go far back to the book of the Son of Sirach for 
its first illustration, and we may find illustrations in 
Philo-Judseus, in Maimonides, and in others in whom 
the abstract power of speculative thought was united 
with the intensity, the moral earnestness, and the 
ethical intuition of the Jew, to produce those works 
which have not been without influence on the progress 
of human thought. What is Christian theology but 
another illustration of the union of Aryan thought 
with the spirit of Hebrew life and thought ? If ever 
thought has wedded fact, it has been in the union of 
Greek thought with the spirit of Hebrew life, where 
the dialectic method of Greece has been applied to the 
elucidation of the Hebrew doctrine of God, man, and 
the world. 

Spinoza was a Hebrew, and the intensity of the 
Hebrew is present in all his works. It may not be 
possible to trace the influence of Hebrew thinkers on 
his system of philosophy, nor to prove his indebtedness 
to particular thinkers of the Middle Ages, but the 
general influence of race and nationality is clear. Nor 
could the general training of his people and the life 
of the school and the synagogue have been without 
influence on him. The long tradition of his people, 
their wondrous history in the past of long ago, and 
their lot in times of persecution in the ages of Christian- 
ity must have had their influence, even though at an 
early period the Jewish interpretation of that history 
no longer commended itself to his mind. The very 
effort by which he placed himself outside of the Jewish 
community was so far the measure of its influence on 



134 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

the development of his mind. The past of the race of 
a man, the achievement of a man's people, cling to him, 
and have an influence beyond the operation of his con- 
scious thought and outside the influence of his specu- 
lative principles. So Spinoza, the Jew, inherits, almost 
without his knowledge, the spirit of the Hebrew pro- 
phets, and this spirit appears in the overflowing of his 
ethical system in the concluding books of the Ethics. 
The spirit of the prophets appears also in his ability to 
bear solitude, in the power of being content with his own 
ideal of character and conduct, in the capacity of taking 
his own way in response to the inward call, unhindered 
by opposition, not deterred by calumny, resolved to 
think what seemed to him to be true, and to do the 
right and follow the good, gainsay these who might. 

All men may join in admiration of his character and 
conduct ; even those who look at his system as false, 
dangerous, and altogether inadequate as a theory of 
life and as an interpretation of experience. Even 
from his system we may learn something, and what 
we learn may be of abiding value. We may learn 
that unity we must seek after until we find it. We 
must find an interpretation of our experience which 
shall do justice to all the elements of it, and which, 
at the same time, will represent it as a unity and as 
a system. This was the endeavour of Spinoza. He 
occupies the central position in the thought of the 
seventeenth century. All the tendencies of the time 
seem to meet in him. He has affinity with all of 
them. The scientific movement of the Renaissance 
is within him as a passion, and he responds to it in 
every fibre of his being ; the mysticism of the Middle 
Ages and the mysticism of the Hebrew people are in 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 135 

him. He seeks to think clearly and to know the 
principles which inform all things, but he thinks 
these out mainly for the guidance of life and for 
the interests of conduct. All these diverse interests 
meet in him, and he seeks to bind them all into the 
organic unity of a logical system. Nor is the bond 
an external one, nor is the unity that of a barrel held 
together by hoops. This is the characteristic of the 
other systems of that century. Principles are held 
together by external bonds; Spinoza sought for an 
inward bond of unity by which the new knowledge 
of the world and of man could be wrought into a 
system. It was a great aim, and a worthy ambition to 
which he devoted his life. What if the attempt was 
a failure, what if his principles did not do justice to 
all the interests concerned, still to dream of such an 
enterprise was symptomatic of greatness. He sought 
to conserve the reality and independence of the 
spiritual, while doing justice to objective world order. 
He sought to make the external and the internal one, 
with a common movement wide enough to explain 
them both. That the principle which was operative in 
the whole world order, as such, should be the principle 
which could explain the persistence of each thing in 
its own particular mode of being, was his main thought ; 
and surely it was a great conception. He was driven 
to think, to speculate, to work from the pressure of 
the inward need for clearness and comprehension 
of himself and of the world in which he lived. Pro- 
blems worried him till it was easier for him to work 
at their solution than not to work. Nor was he 
content with vague thinking; he laboured at the 
expression of his thought, as a poet labours to find 



136 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

a fit expression for his poetry. Of these things we 
shall have abundant proof as we proceed 

Benedict Spinoza was born at Amsterdam on 24th 
November 1632. His parents were Spanish Jews, 
who had fled from Spain to avoid the rigours of 
the Inquisition. He received the usual training 
of a Jewish boy of the time. Such training gave 
him a knowledge of the traditions of his fathers, 
made him acquainted with the Hebrew Scriptures, 
with the Talmud, and with the Jewish philosophy of 
the time. Many questions and problems would thus 
be brought before his mind. In all likelihood the 
mediaeval Jewish philosophy and the speculations 
arising among the Jews may have come to his know- 
ledge. Traces of the influence of such speculations 
are to be found in his works, yet the evidence is not 
direct, and the question is more curious than important. 
It is clear enough that the intensity and definiteness of 
the Hebrew thought about the oneness of God, which 
had been the ancient heritage of his people, influenced 
him, and helped him to the emphasis which he laid on 
the conception of God as the one infinite Being, in 
which all things lived and moved and had their being. 
This mystic tendency towards the unity of the One- 
and-all is the centre of all his striving, and towards 
the adequate expression of it he gave all his strength. 

He did not limit himself to the instruction he could 
receive from the schools of his people. He set himself 
to acquire the new learning of his age. He studied 
natural science and the humanities. A new world 
had opened to the view of the people of that age. 
Knowledge was increased, and it was accessible to all 
who sought it. Spinoza received instruction in Latin 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 137 

from Van Ende, a physician, and the command of 
Latin was the passport to all the learning of the 
time. According to the statement of his biographer, 
Colerus, he gave himself up to the study of physics. 
He may have read the works of Giordano Bruno, 
as there are some coincidences between his writings 
and those of Bruno. It may have been from Bruno 
that his desire to unite the religious ideas which he 
held as Jewish with the scientific conception of nature 
found a way to satisfy itself. From his scientific 
studies he reached the scientific conception of nature, 
a conception which was not a Jewish inheritance. 
The Old Testament has no conception of nature, and 
the conception of nature as such is mainly due to 
the influence of the Greeks. But the conception of 
God — the Eternal, the Unchangeable, the One — was 
essentially a Hebrew idea, and belonged to Spinoza 
as part of his heritage. So great was the Hebrew 
conception of God that in the light of Him the world 
tended to disappear, and the whole system of second 
causes tended to lose even their relative independence. 
The task of Spinoza thus defined itself for him, — how 
to unite the conception of God with the conception 
of nature, and how to state that union so as to keep 
the essential characteristics of both conceptions. 

Of the range and extent of his studies we can 
have only a faint knowledge. M. Joel (Beitrdge zur 
Geschichte der Philosophie) makes out a good case 
for the probability that Spinoza had profoundly 
studied both Jewish theology and Jewish law, and 
that these had a profound influence on his thought. 
There are good grounds also for the belief that 
he was acquainted with the scholastic philosophy, 



138 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

from the use which he makes of scholastic terms and 
arguments in the Cogitatio Metaphysica, published 
as an appendix to his exposition of the Car- 
tesian philosophy. Later, Spinoza became acquainted 
with the works of Descartes, Bacon, and Hobbes, 
and it is evident that he was a wide reader and 
diligent student of the works of other people. His 
work is no system in the air, it has its roots deep 
down in the history of human thought; if he gave 
to it a form personal and original, it must be remem- 
bered that every great system of philosophy has this 
personal element. Every great system of philosophy 
is a synthesis of the impersonal and the personal, — 
the impersonal being the human achievement of the 
past, the personal being the unique product of the 
man who gave the system its content and form. 

As the result of his study and reflection Spinoza 
could no longer live within the system of life and 
thought which satisfied his kinsmen. He came to 
doubt the Jewish philosophy, the Jewish religion, 
and the Scriptures. Every year led him further and 
further away from the life and beliefs of the syna- 
gogue. The authorities began to suspect him, they 
attempted to keep a youth of such promise attached 
to the synagogue, and offered him a yearly pension 
if he would agree to abide with them. He rejected the 
offer, nor was he influenced in the desired direction 
by the attempt of a fanatical Jew to assassinate 
him. Matters came to a crisis in 1656, when he was 
solemnly expelled from the Jewish congregation. He 
was also compelled to leave Amsterdam. He lived 
for a time in the neighbourhood of Amsterdam. In 
accordance with the time-honoured Jewish custom, 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 139 

that every Jew should learn a trade, he had learned 
the business of polishing optical glasses, and this 
served now as means for earning a livelihood. For 
a time friends in the town fetched the glasses to 
town and sold them for him. He was not without 
attached friends. He had little sympathy with the 
fanaticism of the Jews, and less with the fanaticism 
of the Protestants and Roman Catholics of the time. 
He wanted quietness and rest for the ordering of 
the thoughts regarding man, the world, and God, 
which were crowding in on him; and at this quiet 
time he wrote his tract, Tractatus Brevis de Deo et 
Homine, ejusque Felicitate. 

There was little in the aspects of the time or in 
the ordinary pursuits of men to attract a man whose 
chief need was knowledge, and whose chief desire 
was to unite himself with the permanent and un- 
changeable, and to look at all things sub specie 
ceternitatis. To live for knowledge, to think out 
all his thoughts into perfect clearness, had become 
his chief aim and his highest satisfaction. The 
Tractatus is of significance mainly for the light it 
casts on the development of the system of Spinoza. 
Lost sight of for some time and discovered in a most 
interesting manner, this treatise shows us Spinoza on 
the search for a method, and on the way towards 
the expression of his fundamental principles. It 
shows the influence of Descartes on the mind of 
Spinoza. The ontology, the method, the psychology, 
and the view of the passions are largely those of 
Descartes. The variations from Descartes are never- 
theless significant. He accepts Determinism, regards 
the possible as actual, makes nature one with God, 



140 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

and these deviations show us the author moving away 
from Cartesianism to his own system. 

In the year 1661 he moved to Rhynsburg, a small 
town near Leyden, where he dwelt for two years. 
Outwardly uneventful, they were significant for the 
progress made by him towards the completion of 
his system. Determinism was the keynote of his 
system. All things determined by fixed sequence 
and ruled by one method, so that all the phenomena 
of experience might be seen in their unity — this was 
his aim. Ontology, ethics, physics, politics are parts 
of one organism, ruled by one principle, informed 
by one method. Having come to this view, the ques- 
tion arose as to the best method of exposition and 
the best order of thought. This need led him to 
a deliberate study of method, the result of which we 
find in the unfinished treatise, Be Intellectus Emen- 
datione. He was influenced also in the study of 
method by the necessity of teaching. He had 
to teach one of his friends, Albert Burgh, in the 
Cartesian philosophy. He selected the second part 
of Descartes' Principles, and part of the third, 
and resolved to treat these synthetically after the 
geometrical method; and this experiment, with its 
apparent success, probably had some influence on 
his resolve to cast his great work into this synthetic 
form. The Principia Philosophies, Cartesiance, with 
an appendix Cogitata Metaphysica, were published in 
1668, under his own name. 

As to the men who were in intimate relationship 
with Spinoza at this time, we find some information 
in the correspondence. Albert Burgh was a pupil 
of Spinoza, who afterwards became a Roman Catholic, 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 141 

and wrote to his master a curious letter which met 
with a crushing reply (Ep. 76). Another was Hein- 
rich Oldenburg, of Bremen, who came to England as 
Consul under the Protectorate. Oldenburg was 
friendly with many distinguished Englishmen, was 
acting secretary of the Royal Society, and editor of 
its Transactions for a time. He had many interests, 
was full of curiosity regarding scientific and philo- 
sophical matters, and, though not of great faculty 
himself, yet had a desire for the company of great 
men. The first letter of the correspondence is from 
him to Spinoza. In it he speaks of the conversations 
they had at Rhynsburg — of God, of extension, of infinite 
thought, of the differences and agreements between 
these, of the nature of the connection between soul 
and body, and of the principles of the Cartesian and 
Baconian philosophies. As these conversations were 
only quasi per transennam et in transcursw, he desires 
fuller information mainly on two points : first, as to the 
true distinction between mind and matter ; and, second, 
as to the chief defects of the Cartesian and Baconian 
philosophies. The answer of Spinoza is of great in- 
terest, for it encloses definitions, axioms, and the first 
four propositions of Book I. of the Ethics. It defines 
the idea of God and describes Substance and Attri- 
bute, and finally criticises Descartes and Bacon. 
This letter shows that Spinoza had studied the works 
of Descartes and Bacon, that he was, in fact, in the 
full stream of the New Learning. He thinks that 
Descartes and Bacon have strayed too far from the 
knowledge of the First Cause and the origin of all 
things ; that they do not recognise the true nature 
of the human mind, and have not grasped the true 



142 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

nature of error. Had they trained themselves rightly 
they would have discerned the need of correct know- 
ledge on these three points. His criticism concentrates 
itself on Bacon. Bacon does not prove, he simply 
narrates; Bacon assumes that the intellect errs, not 
merely because it is deceived by the senses — it is 
fallacious in its very nature (suua sola natura) ; intellect 
fashions (fingit) all things from the analogy of its 
own nature, not after the analogy of the universe. 
Intellect mixes its own nature with the nature of things. 
Further, Spinoza accuses Bacon of holding that the 
intellect is prone to abstractions, and such things as 
are in a flux it feigns to be constant ; and, finally, that 
he is unfair to the nature of intellect, because he 
affirms of it that it is in a constant movement, and 
is unable to stand still or to be content. 

The final criticism is worthy of mention. It refers 
to the Cartesian principle that the will is free, and 
more extensive than the intellect, or, in the words of 
Bacon, " the understanding is not a dry light, but 
receives infusion from the will." It is characteristic of 
Spinoza that he should affirm that will in general 
differs from this or that particular volition, precisely as 
whiteness differs from this or that white object, or 
humanity from this or that man. Will is merely an 
entity of the reason, and cannot be called the cause of 
particular volitions, and as these need a cause the will 
is not free. Thus we learn that in 1661 the main 
features of his system were already fully thought out. 

The years of his residence in Rhynsburg were 
fruitful years: he had come to conclusions regarding 
method, he had applied the method to its objects ; in 
short, he found that the rules of knowing and the 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 143 

nature of the things known were mutually involved, 
the one implied the other. The De Intellectus Emenda- 
tione was the exposition of the formal rules of know- 
ing. The Ethica was the application of them to the 
elucidation of reality, as it appeared to Spinoza. In 
1663 Spinoza removed to Voorburg, a village about 
two miles from Amsterdam, where he dwelt until 1670 ; 
afterwards he resided in the Hague itself, till his death 
in 1677. During this period he made many friends 
and many enemies. Of his friends we have already 
named Oldenburg, and of the others the ablest and 
most conspicuous was Ludwig von Tschirnhausen, a 
Bohemian nobleman, whose work in science is of 
worth and whose philosophic ability was of value. 

In 1670 the Tractatus Theologico-Politicas was 
published anonymously, and met a fierce reception. 
Into the history of that reception it is not necessary to 
enter, nor at present into the merits of the book. The 
book was prohibited by the States-General, and was 
placed on the Index of the Church of Rome. 

Of curious interest is the correspondence between 
Spinoza and Oldenburg, which may be read in the Van 
Vloten edition of the works of Spinoza, vol. ii. Being 
secretary of the Royal Society, and interested in all 
the work of the society, Oldenburg tells Spinoza of 
the work. He sends him the latest scientific news and 
the most recent discoveries in physics. The criticisms 
of Spinoza are instructive, as they illustrate the weak- 
ness of mere deductive reasoning as applied to matters 
of fact, and the need of ascertaining what the facts are. 
The experiments of Boyle are not appreciated by 
Spinoza, and the deductive reasoning of Spinoza does 
not appeal to Boyle. Yet the reasoning of Spinoza is 



144 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

acute, and the letters are full of interest. The physi- 
cists have gotten them the victory, but Spinoza has 
had his revenge, as the physicists nowadays are not 
content till they bring all the movements of nature 
within the sweep of one magnificent formula. Physical 
science aims at deduction as its goal. 

In 1673 the Elector Palatine offered to Spinoza a 
professorship of philosophy at Heidelberg. It was de- 
clined, and the reasons of declinature may be quoted. 
" I have been unable to induce myself to accept this 
splendid opportunity, though I have long deliberated 
about it. I think, in the first place, that I should 
abandon philosophical research if I consented to find 
time for teaching young students. I think, in the 
second place, that I do not know the limits within 
which the freedom of my philosophical teaching would 
be confined, if I am to avoid all appearance of disturb- 
ing the publicly established religion. Religious quarrels 
do not arise so much from ardent zeal for religion, as 
from men's various dispositions and love of contra- 
diction, which causes them to habitually distort and 
condemn everything, however rightly it may have 
been said. I have experienced these results in my 
private and secluded station, how much more should I 
have to fear them after my elevation to this post of 
honour " (Letter 54, Elwes' Trans.). 

The desire to devote himself altogether to philo- 
sophy, and the resolve to say the thing he saw and 
nothing else, determined his path. He continued to 
live at the Hague, first in the house afterwards occupied 
by Colerus, his biographer, and afterwards in a less 
expensive house. The last five years and a half of his 
life were spent in the quietest possible way, ready to 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 145 

receive all who called on him, but declining to visit in 
turn. 

He had friends who came to see him, and were 
ready to provide for his comfort, had he allowed them. 
The brothers De Witt, who were so rudely treated by 
their countrymen, were among his friends. Glimpses 
of distinguished visitors are obtained, the most dis- 
tinguished of whom was perhaps Leibniz. Of the 
relations between them, of the fact that Leibniz called 
on him, that he had read the Ethica, and that he had 
thought deeply on the problems of the system of 
Spinoza, much might be said were there space. The 
main thing here is to note the quietness of his 
declining years, and his mental activity. He continued 
to brood over the problems of existence while life 
lasted. In some ways his was an ideal life. He was 
almost idolized by the family with which he lived. 
Colerus tells us : " If he was very frugal in his way of 
living, his conversation was also very sweet and easy. 
He knew admirably well how to master his passions : 
he was never seen very melancholy, nor very merry. 
He had the command of his anger, and if at any time 
he was uneasy in his mind, it did not appear out- 
wardly ; or if he happened to express his grief by 
some gestures, or by some words, he never failed to 
retire immediately, for fear of doing an unbecoming 
thing. He was, besides, very courteous and obliging; 
he would very often discourse with his landlady, 
especially when she lay in, and with the people of the 
house when they happened to be sick or afflicted ; he 
never failed then to comfort them, and exhort them to 
bear with patience those evils which God assigned to 
them as a lot. He put the children in mind of going 
10 



146 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

often to church, and taught them to be obedient and 
dutiful to their parents. When the people of the 
house came from church he would often ask them 
what they had learned, and what they could re- 
member of the sermon. He had a great esteem for 
Dr. Cordes, my predecessor; who was a learned and 
good - natured man, and of an exemplary life, which 
gave occasion to Spinoza to praise him very often. 
Nay, he went sometimes to hear him preach, and he 
esteemed particularly his learned way of explaining 
the Scriptures, and the solid application he made of it. 
He advised, at the time, his landlord and the people of 
the house not to miss any sermon of so excellent a 
preacher. It happened one day that his landlady 
asked him whether he believed she could be saved in 
the religion she professed : he answered, your religion 
is a good one, you need not look for another, nor doubt 
that you may be saved in it, provided that whilst you 
apply yourself to piety, you live at the same time a 
peaceable and quiet life" (quoted from the Appendix 
to Sir F. Pollock's work on Spinoza, pp. 420, 421). 

From his own writings we may gather the expression 
of those principles which he wrought into his daily 
life. " Assuredly nothing forbids man to enjoy himself 
save grim and gloomy superstitions. For why is it more 
lawful to satiate one's hunger and thirst than to drive 
away one's melancholy ? I reason, and have convinced 
myself as follows : no deity, nor any one else, save the 
envious, takes pleasure in my infirmity and discomfort, 
nor sets down to my virtue the tears, sobs, fear, and 
the like, which are signs of the infirmity of spirit ; on 
the contrary, the greater the pleasure wherewith we 
are affected the greater the perfection whereto we 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 147 

pass ; in other words, the more must we partake of the 
divine nature " (Ethics, Part IV. Prop. 45, Note, Elwes' 
Trans.). 

Lest this should be misunderstood we ought to carry 
with us Spinoza's doctrine of pleasure, which we shall 
see by and by. We make another quotation, as it 
casts some light on the practical ethics of Spinoza. 
" He who, guided by emotion only, endeavours to cause 
others to love what he loves himself, and to make the 
rest of the world live according to his own fancy, acts 
solely by impulse, and is therefore hateful, especially 
to those who take delight in something different, and 
accordingly study, and by similar impulse endeavour, 
to make men live in accordance with what pleases 
themselves. Again, as the highest good sought by men 
under the guidance of emotion is often such that it 
can only be possessed by a single individual, it follows 
that those who love it are not consistent in their 
intentions, but, while they delight to sing its praises, 
fear to be believed. But he who endeavours to lead 
men by reason does not act by impulse, but courteously 
and kindly, and his intention is always consistent. 
Again, whatsoever we desire and do, whereof we are 
the cause in so far as we possess the idea of God, or 
know God, I set down to religion. The desire of well- 
doing which is engendered by a life according to 
reason I call piety " (Ethics, Part IV. Prop. 38, Elwes' 
Trans. Note I.). 

In his self-command, in his regard for the welfare 
for others, he carried out in practice the precepts he 
had set forth so admirably in the later part of the 
Ethics. Of that teaching we shall speak later. Mean- 
while let us note how the days passed in quietness, 



148 THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

with its meditative work interspersed with manual 
labour, each in harmony and measure. His health 
failed; indeed, he had never been strong. He had 
suffered from consumption, and for many years had 
to live almost by rule. The end came suddenly and 
quietly ; he died in February 1677. It was a strenuous 
life that he had lived. Stern and lonely was his lot; 
the victim of persecution during his lifetime, his fate 
in the history of philosophy is not unlike that of his 
earthly life. Fierce have been the criticisms passed on 
his system of thought, strong have been the denuncia- 
tions directed against him and his works. But the 
defence has been as keen as the attack. He was for a 
century more denounced than read. The Aufkldrung 
had little sympathy with Spinoza, his thought was not 
transparent to the Illumination. But on the revival of 
philosophy, and on the agitation of its deeper principles, 
Spinoza came to the front, and his system won the 
admiration of poets like Goethe, men of literature like 
Schiller and Lessing, and of the greatest philosophers 
of the golden age of philosophy in Germany. Nor 
were there lacking theologians who found that they 
might learn something from him. Schleiermacher found 
much to admire in his life and work, and Dorner 
recognises that his work had some significance for 
theology. 



CHAPTEE VIII 

De Intellectus Emendations — The Search for a Method — The Rules 
of Method — True and adequate Ideas— Ideas and Abstractions 
— Definition — The Understanding — Properties of the Under- 
standing — General Laws — The Order and Connection of Ideas, 
and the Order and Connection of Things — Causality — Hume 
— Degrees of Knowledge, perfect Knowledge. 

The method of Descartes was a measure devised by 
him in relief of doubt. By the application of rigid 
doubt to every conviction, he sought to arrive at a 
principle which could not be doubted. He was in 
search of certainty, and he seemed to find it in the 
Cogito, ergo sum. Having found his principle, he used 
it as the source and criterion of knowledge. Thus his 
procedure was intellectual, not ethical ; and ethics 
was scarcely touched by him. Spinoza has also had 
his voyage of exploration ; but he is in search of 
another goal, and has a different vision in his mind. 
Descartes sought a principle of certainty ; Spinoza 
sought for the good. His Treatise de Intellectus Emen- 
datione has the place in his works which the treatise 
on Method has in the work of Descartes. It has a 
sub-title, or an addition to the title, Et de Via, qua 
optime in veram rerum cognitionem dirigitnr — How 
the Intellect may best be guided to a True Knowledge 
of Things. But a true knowledge is desirable in order 

149 



150 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

that men may obtain the true and final good. The 
opening pages of the De Intellectus Emendatione 
describes the ordinary objects of men's desires, and 
proceeds to an appreciation of the true and final good. 
Spinoza wishes to direct all sciences to one aim, one 
end : to wit, that men may reach supreme human per- 
fection. This is the highest good ever to be sought 
after ; and all science and research are of value just as 
they serve this great end. It is no doubt true that 
good and bad, perfect and imperfect, are relative terms, 
and that nothing in its own nature can be called 
perfect or imperfect, for all things come to pass accord- 
ing to the eternal order and fixed laws of nature. 
But, he continues, human weakness cannot attain to 
this order in its own thoughts ; but man can conceive 
a human character much more stable than his own, 
and he may acquire such a character. Everything that 
is a means towards the acquisition of a perfect char- 
acter is good. And the chief good is, that he should 
arrive, together with other individuals, if possible, at 
the possession of this character. Knowledge is a means 
to this end, specially the knowledge of the union exist- 
ing between the mind and the whole of nature. " This, 
then* is the end for which I strive, to attain to such a 
character myself, and to endeavour that others may 
understand even as I do, so that their understanding 
and desire may entirely agree with my own. In order 
to bring this about it is necessary to understand as 
much of nature as will enable us to attain to the 
aforesaid character, and also to form a social order 
such as is most conducive to the attainment of this char- 
acter by the greatest number with the least difficulty 
or danger " (De Intell. Emend., Elwes' trans., pp. 6, 7). 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 151 

It is for this end, of the formation of character, that 
Spinoza sought for a means of improving the under- 
standing and purifying it, so that it may apprehend 
things without error and in the best possible way. 
It is not too much to say, looking at all his works 
from first to last, that he never lost sight of this prac- 
tical, ethical end — to form man to a perfect character. 
All our actions and thoughts must be directed to this 
one end. As men must guide their life, it is necessary 
to lay down some rules in a preliminary way, antici- 
pative of experience, and to take these as provisionally 
good. These he sets forth, and the sum of them is, 
that we should speak so as to be understood by the 
common people, and comply with every general custom 
that does not hinder the attainment of our purpose; 
that we should indulge in pleasure so far as that is 
necessary for the preservation of health ; that we 
should obtain only enough money as is necessary for 
the preservation of life and maintenance of health, and 
to follow such customs as are consistent with our 
purpose. 

These provisional rules are to enable us to live while 
we are engaged in the task of amending the under- 
standing and making it fit for its work. That- work 
is, that we should know ourselves, and the world, in 
order that we may attain a perfect human character. 
The first step is to clear our minds from error. Passing 
by all our other needs, the great need is to fit us to 
understand things that we may attain to the supreme 
good. There are four ways of arriving at exact know- 
ledge: (1) By hearsay or authority; (2) by mere ex- 
perience ; (3) by reasoning " when the essence of one 
thing is inferred from another thing, but not ade- 



152 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

quately " ; and, (4) by complete perception when a thing 
is perceived only through its essence. Having illus- 
trated these different kinds of perceptions, he shows that 
the fourth kind of perception alone is adequate, because 
it alone can give us the whole nature of the thing per- 
ceived without danger or error. The method whereby 
we gain knowledge of the things we need to know, 
does not consist in assuming that we need a method 
to test the first method, and a third to supplement the 
second, and so on. In such a way we should never 
arrive at knowledge. It is with knowledge as it 
is with the making of tools : less perfect tools help 
to the making of the more perfect ; so it is with the 
understanding. The mind, exercising its strength, pro- 
cures intellectual instruments for its work, till it attains 
to wisdom. 

The instruments with which we are endowed, and 
by the use of which more perfect instruments are 
fashioned, are true ideas. True ideas are self-evident. 
The method is not concerned with the origin of our 
ideas, or of how we come to possess them. The mind 
can think, and think truly. Method is the description 
of the way in which we apprehend in true thinking. 
We think truly when we apprehend things through 
their essential nature or through their proximate cause. 
After an exposition of the idea and its ideatum he 
concludes that the method is nothing else than reflec- 
tive knowledge, or the idea of an idea, that there can 
be no method unless an idea exists previously. A 
method is good which shows how the mind should be 
directed according to the standard of the given true 
idea. He further assumes that the relation between 
two ideas are the same as the relation between the 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 153 

realities corresponding to these ideas, and the reflective 
knowledge will have a value corresponding to the 
realities with which the ideas deal. Thus that method 
will be most perfect which affords the standard of the 
most perfect being by which we may direct our mind. 
As we acquire new ideas we acquire fresh instruments 
by which we may make further progress. Further, the 
mind apprehends itself better in proportion to the 
number of natural objects which it perfectly under- 
stands. The greater the number of objects which the 
mind apprehends and comprehends, the more perfect 
will the mind become ; and the mind and the method 
of its improvement will become absolutely perfect 
when it attains to the knowledge of the perfect being. 
The more the mind knows, the better does it under- 
stand its own strength and the order of nature ; as it 
increases in self-knowledge it can direct itself more 
easily, can lay down rules for its guidance, and by 
increased knowledge of nature it can more easily 
avoid what is useless. 

Spinoza postulates as the beginning of the appli- 
cation of his method the truth of the fundamental 
idea. We cannot start unless with an idea which is 
itself true and the guarantee of its own truth. The 
test of truth is in the very act of thinking, for to 
think truly is to have in idea the real nature of the 
object of thought. He assumes that the true idea is in 
the same case as its correlate in the world of reality, 
and from this it follows that, in order to reproduce in 
every respect the faithful image of nature, our minds 
must deduce it from the idea which represents the 
origin and source of the whole of nature. Spinoza 
asks, at this stage, why should we prove this by 



154 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

reasoning, seeing that it ought to be self-evident that 
we should direct our mind according to the standard 
of the true given idea? The objection to which he 
replies is, that we need to prove that our starting- 
point is a true idea ; that proof would need a further 
proof, and so on. To which he replies, that if a man 
had acquired new ideas in the proper order, according 
to the standard of the original true idea, he would 
never have doubted of the truth of his knowledge, for 
truth would have made itself manifest, and all things 
would have flowed, as it were, spontaneously towards 
him. But this rarely happens, and he has been forced 
to arrange matters so that he may accomplish by 
reflection and reasoning what needed to be done. 
Further, for establishing the truth and valid reasoning, 
no other means are needed than truth and valid reason- 
ing. Moreover, this needs keen and accurate discern- 
ment, and few men are so qualified. There are other 
obstacles, but, after all, we must start somewhere, and 
if any doubt of the primary truth and the deductions 
based on it, " he must either be arguing in bad faith, 
or there are men who are in complete mental blind- 
ness." 

Leaving the further description of such sceptics, we 
find that Spinoza resumes thus. We have defined the 
end to which we desire to direct our thoughts; we 
have determined the mode of perception best adapted 
to aid us in attaining our ends ; we have discovered the 
way which our thoughts should take in order to make 
a good beginning, to wit, that we should use every true 
idea as a standard in pursuing our inquiries according 
to fixed rules. The right method should provide a way 
of distinguishing true ideas from other perceptions, 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 155 

should provide rules for perceiving unknown things 
according to the standard of the true idea, and should 
give us an order which would enable us to avoid 
useless labour. The method would be perfect when 
we attain by it the knowledge of the absolutely per- 
fect Being. 

How to distinguish true ideas from all other is the 
next step. Every perception is a thing, or of the 
" essence " of a thing. " Fiction " is concerned with 
things possible, not with things necessary or impossible. 
A thing is impossible when its existence would imply 
a contradiction, necessary when its non-existence would 
imply a contradiction, possible when its existence or 
non-existence could imply no contradiction. No fiction 
can contain eternal truths. I cannot feign that I do 
not exist when I know that I do exist. Fiction is 
concerned only with the possible; it has no place in 
dealing with truths that carry their evidence in their 
very nature. 

At this stage Spinoza makes it clear that his use of 
the word " idea " marks its complete separation from 
mere general conceptions or abstractions. One cannot 
conceive the existence of Adam by means of existence 
in general, — " it would be the same as if, in order to con- 
ceive his existence, we went back to the nature of being 
so as to define Adam as a being." The more existence is 
conceived generally, the more is it conceived confusedly. 
The more it is understood particularly, the more it is 
understood clearly. Spinoza aimed at the conception of 
concrete being, and endeavoured, not always success- 
fully, to avoid abstractions. Passing to the considera- 
tion of the use of hypotheses, he lays down the position 
that he can feign as long as he does not perceive any 



156 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

impossibility or necessity. He knows that the earth is 
round, but nothing prevents him from telling people 
that it is a hemisphere, or that it is like a half apple 
carved in relief on a dish. But we are unable to feign 
that we are not thinking when we are thinking, we 
cannot think of the soul as a square. Still, there is a 
legitimate use of hypotheses. We may use them as 
long as we have a clear and distinct perception of what 
is involved. He contends, however, that a fictitious 
idea is necessarily confused, and as all confusion arises 
from the fact that the mind has only partial know- 
ledge, it follows that if the idea of something be very 
clear and distinct it must be simple. We may have 
clear ideas of a simple thing, we may also break up a 
complex into component parts, and so cause confusion 
to disappear. But fiction cannot be simple. In fact, 
Spinoza agrees with Mrs. Carlyle, " that the mixing up 
of things is the great Bad." Error is confusion, truth 
is self -consistent, simple and one-fold. Falsity consists 
in affirming of a thing what is not contained in the 
conception of the thing. On the other hand, simple 
ideas cannot be other than true. 

The discussion of the nature of the false idea is 
followed by an investigation of the doubtful idea, and 
an inquiry into the sources of confusion, among which 
may be mentioned the use of the imagination. He 
distinguishes between the imagination and the intellect. 
" We think that what we imagine we understand, and 
what we more readily imagine is clearer to us." 
Thus we put first what should be last, the true order 
of progress is reversed, and no legitimate conclusion 
is drawn. 

Passing to the second part of the method, he sets 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 157 

before us the object aimed at. Having shown that the 
possession of clear ideas is the indispensable condition 
of progressive knowledge, the inquiry necessarily fol- 
lows as to the acquisition of clear and distinct ideas, 
ideas which are the product of pure intellect and not of 
chance physical notions. His aim is to reduce all ideas 
to unity, and so associate and arrange them in the mind 
that they will reflect the order of nature and the 
reality of nature, both as a whole and as parts. For 
this end everything should be conceived, either through 
its essence or through its proximate cause. A self- 
existent thing is conceived through its essence only ; a 
dependent existence must be understood through its 
cause. Thus we require to be careful not to confound 
that which is only in the understanding with what is 
in the thing itself. We need either some particular 
affirmative essence or a true and legitimate definition. 
A perfect definition must explain the inmost essence of 
a thing. That is, the definition must comprehend the 
proximate cause, and should be such that all the pro- 
perties of that thing, in so far as it is considered by itself 
and not in conjunction with other things, can be deduced 
from it. As to the definition of an uncreated thing, 
Spinoza lays down these four rules : — " (1) The exclu- 
sion of the idea of cause — that is, the thing must not 
need explanation by anything outside itself. (2) When 
the definition of a thing has been given there must be 
no room for doubt as to whether the thing exists or 
not. (3) It must contain, as far as the mind is con- 
cerned, no substantives that could be put into an adjec- 
tival form ; in other words, the object defined must not 
be explained through abstraction. (4) Lastly, though 
this is not absolutely necessary, it should be possible to 



158 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

deduce from the definition all the properties of the 
thing defined." Note should be taken of the first and 
third of these rules, as the first will enable us to under- 
stand what Spinoza means by the phrase causa sui, 
used in the Ethics, and the third is a testimony to 
Spinoza's thorough-going nominalism, and a testimony 
to his belief that he was not dealing with abstractions, 
but with the properties of real concrete being. 

He has the conviction — it lies at the foundation of all 
his procedure — that when the mind devotes itself to any 
thought, so as to examine it and to deduce from it all 
the legitimate conclusions possible, any falsehood that 
lurks in the thought will be detected ; if the thought 
be true, the mind will readily proceed without inter- 
ruption to deduce truths from it. But the foundation 
must be sure. And therefore it can be nothing else 
than the knowledge of that which constitutes the 
reality of truth, and the knowledge of the understand- 
ing, its properties and powers. When we have ac- 
quired this we shall have a foundation from which we 
can deduce our thoughts and a path whereby the intel- 
ect, according to its capacity, may attain the know- 
ledge of eternal things. Finally, Spinoza sets himself 
to inquire into the properties of the understanding. 
What is given is simply an enumeration of these 
properties, and with this enumeration the treatise ab- 
ruptly closes. They are of unequal value, yet all of them 
are suggestive. " (1) The intellect involves certainty, it 
knows that a thing exists in reality (it is better in Latin) : 
Quod sciat res ita esse formaliter, ut in ipso objective 
continentur." (2) It perceives certain things, or forms 
some ideas absolutely, and some from others. (3) The 
ideas which the understanding forms absolutely ex- 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 159 

press infinity, determinate ideas are derived from other 
ideas. (4) The understanding forms positive ideas be- 
fore negative ideas. (5) Res non tarn sub duratione, 
quam sub quadam specie seternitatis, et numero infinito ; 
vel potius, ad res percipiendas, nee ad numerum, nee 
ad durationem attendit: cum autem res imaginatur, 
eos sub certo numero, determinato duratione, et quan- 
titate percipit " (Van Vloten, vol. i. pp. 35, 36). 

It may be conceded that Spinoza, in the unfinished 
work on method, was in search of those principles and 
presuppositions on which our knowledge rests. It is 
an attempt to interpret experience. He recognises 
that to content ourselves with the given, as it is given 
in time and place, and to accept the mere perception of 
these presentations as final, is not to have true know- 
ledge, or adequately to interpret experience. This is 
a mere experientia vaga, as Spinoza calls it. Given 
things in mere time and place are not understood till 
they are seen as there, through the operation of a 
general law, and as an illustration of an order of things 
of which they are the particular expression. There 
is a definite inner connection in the things which are 
given, and the explanation of them is found in their 
connectedness. A beginning is made with the given, 
so Spinoza holds, for he remarks that we should always 
deduce our concepts from real things by following the 
sequence of causes as far as we can. A statement of 
matters of fact, and a statement of the principles and 
conceptions involved in the ongoing of matters of fact — 
this is the teaching of Spinoza. On the physical side 
there are the laws of motion, on the mental side there 
are the laws by which ideas are bound together, and 
in both cases there is the idea of conformity to law, 



160 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

and it is the order in the particular facts and the law 
which regulates their happening that makes them in- 
telligible. Law and order are the constant and eternal 
things on which mutable and transient things so de- 
pend, that they can neither exist nor be understood 
without them. 

It is hopeless to try to understand the endless series 
of phenomena, they go on from number to number in 
an eternal regress ; but true knowledge may be had, for 
it depends not on the endless series, but on the law 
which unites the series and makes it one. The series 
of phenomena are one thing, and the law of their 
causation is another, and it is on the latter that know- 
ledge is based. He distinguishes in like manner between 
general laws, which are to him laws of real things, as 
real as the things, and mere abstractions, abstracta et 
universalia. The former are entice realia, the latter 
are only entia rationis. The former are objectively 
valid, the latter have validity only so far as it is a 
mental idea ; it has no reference to reality. Truth and 
validity as applied to knowledge depend on the clear- 
ness and distinctness arising from perfect consistency. 
Error is possible only when the mind takes the part 
for the whole, when it attributes absolute worth to 
what is isolated and limited. Error will disappear as 
we move away from incorrect presuppositions and work 
our way onward with strict logical consistency. " Veri- 
tas norma sui, et falsse est " — Truth is the measure of 
all things. 

What guarantee have we that logical consistency 
shall give us truth and validity. Spinoza simply 
assumes that ideas represent reality, that the order 
and connection of ideas are the same as the order 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 161 

and connection of things ; we shall see this more 
completely when we read the Ethics, and we shall 
see the reason why Spinoza held that they were so. 
But the problem of knowledge as it burdens and 
perplexes philosophy to-day was not raised by 
Spinoza, though his statement really gave rise to it 
in the mind of others. The ultimate question of 
philosophy, in its epistemological aspect, is just the 
connection between the order and connection of our 
ideas and the order and connection of things. By 
what warrant do we assume that existence will follow 
the laws which are valid for the relations of our 
thoughts. Hume expressed the problem in his char- 
acteristic way, and his clarifying criticism has set 
the problem to philosophy to-day. " In short," Hume 
says, " there are two principles, which I cannot render 
consistent; nor is it in my power to renounce either 
of them, namely, that all our distinct perceptions 
are distinct existences, and that the mind never per- 
ceives any real connection among distinct existences. 
Did our perceptions either inhere in something 
simple and individual, or did the mind perceive 
some real connection among them, there would 
be no difficulty " (Hume's Works, vol. i. p. 559, Green 
and Grosse's ed.). This aspect of the problem never 
came before the thought of Spinoza. To him it 
appeared axiomatic that the presuppositions of our 
reason were also the presupposition of things ; 
that our fixed and necessary ideas had eternal 
realities correspondent to them; that the objective 
world order corresponded to the order of our purified 
and rectified thinking. There are many forms of 
expressing this correspondence. It may be expressed 
n 



162 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

thus : that the necessary truths of reason are true 
alike of thought and things, or one might say that 
uniformity of experience has generated necessity of 
thought, just as we regard mind as formative of things 
or things as generative of thought. It is a problem 
whether we look at it as the problem of perception 
in the modern sense of that word, or as the problem 
of thought ; and the various solutions of the problem 
are descriptive of the various schools of thought in the 
past and the present. 

Spinoza did not reflect on the problem; indeed, it 
was not before his mind as a problem. He assumed 
that our thoughts corresponded to things, and that 
a necessity of thought represented a necessity of 
things ; further, that the relations which hold between 
our thoughts hold between the objects of our thoughts. 
Why these should be so is not explained. It had 
led to Occasionalism, to the seeing of all things in 
God, and to many other forms of solution ; but Spinoza 
calmly tells us that our first thought, from which all 
our thoughts are derived, corresponds with the first 
thing from which all other things are derived. The 
connection between the first thing and all other things 
is as real as the things themselves, so also with 
thoughts. The parallelism continues all along the 
line of things, and is complete, but it is assumed all 
the time that thought has wedded fact. Will thought 
relations hold among matters of fact ? Logical rela- 
tions hold in thought, how shall we extend them to 
a real world ? Thought relations are true and valid 
as thought, but will they hold with regard to the 
particulars, or enable us to control phenomena and 
turn them to our uses ? What is the relation between 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 163 

thought and knowledge ? The difficulty in question 
seems to have been present to the mind of Spinoza 
when he had before him the conception of the possible. 
The possible involves no contradiction. Just as Hume 
says: "The contrary of every matter of fact is still 
possible; because it can never imply a contradiction, 
and is conceived by the mind with the same facility 
and distinctness as if ever so conformable to reality. 
That the sun will not rise to-morrow is no less in- 
telligible a proposition, and implies no more contra- 
diction than the affirmative, that it will rise. We 
should in vain, therefore, attempt to demonstrate 
its falsehood" (Hume's Essays, vol. ii. p. 23, Green 
and Grosse). 

The category of the possible, formally recognised 
by Spinoza, had really no influence on his thought. In 
the long run he eliminates it by the identification of 
the possible and the real, as we shall see. And in 
the meantime he regarded the possible as subject 
to causation, and causation is for him the funda- 
mental concept of his philosophy. Substantiality is 
really causality, and substance is conceived as active. 
He accepts the notions of substantiality and causality 
as self-evident, ultimate, and as needing no further 
analysis. Again, he takes for granted conceptions 
the analysis of which has been the problem of suc- 
cessive generations of thinkers. He regards the law 
of causation as the source of our knowledge of real 
existence; while in reality his identification of 
causality with power makes the w T hole conception 
teleological and practical. Of this more in the sequel. 

Causality being taken by Spinoza as real power, and 
particular things being taken as dependent on causation 



1 64 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

for their existence and their particularity, he is able to 
eliminate the conception of the possible. For, after 
all, causation is of the same kind as the necessity by 
which we deduce conclusions from their premises. 
Ground and consequence, or the logical connection 
between premises and conclusion, are not temporal 
relations ; they are eternal, constant, and permanent. 
Thus he construes, or endeavours to construe, the 
relation of cause and effect as something which 
exists out of time ; and particular phenomena, regarded 
as the outcome of causation, are set in their fit place 
eternally. The temporal relation has no place in 
real knowledge. Reasonable knowledge takes place 
when temporal relations are overcome, and we look 
at things and their relations under some form of 
eternity. 

It follows that if we have due knowledge of the cause, 
the knowledge of the effect duly follows. Cause and 
effect are so related to one another, that when the 
relation is fully unfolded the difference between the 
two falls into the background, and the effect is simply 
the unfolding of the nature of the cause. 

Reasonable knowledge leads inevitably to the dis- 
covery of the eternal and the necessary in the world 
of things. This is the work of reason, and reason 
presupposes that eternal and necessary principles are 
to be found in the world of things. Yet this is not, 
according to Spinoza, the highest form of knowledge. 
In rational knowledge the antithesis between general 
laws and particular things is not overcome, and the 
matters of fact present some resistance to the laws 
of thought, and knowledge is not complete. Spinoza 
longs for a kind of knowledge by means of which 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 165 

particulars will take their place in the system of 
things, completely interpenetrated with the constant and 
eternal laws of the universal order, and that each thing 
in its individual setting will give the universal order, 
and the universal order will give the particular thing. 
This kind of knowledge is intuitive, for in it there 
is no before or after, no particular or universal, no 
parts nor whole; for these distinctions are relevant 
only to imperfect knowledge, striving to reach its 
objects by means of comparison and inference, which 
in their very nature involve the possibility of mistake. 
It is obvious that such knowledge is possible only 
to an intelligence which is absolute, unlimited, at 
the centre of things, and which has all possibility 
present to it as a real system. Such knowledge may 
be possible, but if so it has already overcome the 
antithesis of mind and matter, subject and object, 
and also the antithesis of time and eternity; and 
other distinctions with which finite minds work have 
ceased to have significance, and it is not possible for 
us to describe its nature and action. For Spinoza 
it appeared to be the crown of all knowledge; but 
for him it was also the fact that intuitive knowledge 
was real, because such knowledge was only the other 
side of being, the thought that reflected the actualities 
of being in its wholeness as a system of all possible 
existence. All the relations of being to itself, and of 
all attributes of being to substance, had their corres- 
pondent relationships set forth in the world of thought, 
and the res cogitans kept pace with the world of 
objects. Here there is no before and after ; really, there 
is no question of the relation of res cogitans to the 
res extensa, of the natura natwrans to the natura 



166 THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

naturata ; for the coyitans has knowledge of all the 
possibilities of things, and sees them as actual. Nor 
is there any question of cause and effect either in 
the world of thought or of things, still less is there 
any question of influence of the one on the other. In 
this state of perfect intuitive knowledge all is known 
as it is, and is as it is known. 

The tractate on the theory of knowledge was never 
completed by Spinoza, It is a suggestive treatise, so 
far as it is wrought out, and contains many things 
worthy of admiration. It shows that he had reflected 
deeply on the procedure of the mind in its search for 
knowledge, and it shows that he had a vivid appre- 
hension of the hindrances which dogged its steps 
on its advance towards truth. He reflected on the 
assumptions made by the mind in its endeavour to 
understand existence. He reduced these assumptions 
to the fewest possible number, the fewest possible 
for him; but they remained unsifted, uncriticised by 
him, and were as dogmatically assumed by him as 
they had been by former thinkers. He treats them 
as realities, and he bases his system on them. Of 
them we shall speak presently, but it will be well 
for us to look for a little at his first systematic work, 
his Exposition of the Cartesian Philosophy, with its 
significant appendix, Cogitatio Metaphysica. We might 
look also, had we time, at the Tractatits Theologico- 
Politicus, not so much for its criticism of the Old 
Testament or for its religious worth, as for the light 
it casts on the principles of his philosophical system. 
For in it we see the principles in their practical 
application to history and to life, and we can thus 
understand them all the more clearly. 



CHAPTER IX 

Exposition of the Cartesian Philosophy — A Synthetic Exposition 
more Geometrico — Definitions — Axioms — Propositions — The 
Cogitatio Metaphysica — "Ways of Thinking — The Four Kinds 
of Being — Affections of Being — The Necessary, the Im- 
possible, the Possible, and the Contingent — Freedom of the 
Will — Time and Eternity — Good and Evil — The Attributes 
of God — The Nature of Man. 

The Exposition of the Cartesian Philosophy, published 
in 1663, was prepared by Spinoza for the use of a pupil 
living with him while his residence was at Klryns- 
burg. It is based on the second part of Descartes' 
Principia Philosophic, with some sections of the 
third part. Spinoza proceeds synthetically, with all the 
apparatus of geometrical demonstration, more geome- 
trico. It is interesting in itself and as a step towards 
the final form which ruled the method of Spinoza. 
The Cogitatio Metaphysica, published as an appendix 
to the Exposition of the Cartesian Philosophy, is of 
great significance, as by means of it the growth of the 
system of Spinoza, towards the final form which it 
assumed in the Ethics, can in some measure be traced. 
We are able, also, to trace the points of divergence 
from Descartes, and to appreciate the originality of 
Spinoza. 

Beginning with a description of the Cartesian doubt, 

167 



1 68 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

and the method arising therefrom, namely, to lay aside 
all prejudices, to discover the foundations on which the 
superstructure is to be built, to detect the causes of error, 
and to think all things clearly and distinctly, Spinoza 
proceeds to the definitions and axioms by means of which 
the propositions are to be demonstrated. All operations 
of will, intellect, imagination, and of the senses are 
thoughts ; but only those of which we are immediately 
conscious, and not those which may be deduced from 
these operations, are thoughts. Idea is that form of 
thought by the immediate perception of which we are 
conscious of that thought. The objective reality of an 
idea is the entity of the thing represented by the idea, 
so far as it is in the idea. " Omnis res, cui inest im- 
mediate, ut in subjecto, sive per quam existit aliquid, 
quod percipimus, hoc est aliqua proprietas sive qualitas 
sive attributum, cujus realis in nobis est, vocatur sub- 
stantia " (vol. ii. p. 389, Def. V.). The substance in which 
thought inheres is called mind, and the substance which 
is the immediate subject of extension and of accidents 
which presuppose extension is called body. The sub- 
stance which we understand to be per se supremely 
perfect, in which we conceive no defect or limitation 
of perfection, is called God. Two substances are to be 
distinguished when it is possible for either to exist 
without the other. 

We can move to the knowledge and certainty of the 
unknown only by the cognition and certainty of 
another thing which is prior to it. Based on these 
definitions and axioms are certain propositions, to the 
effect that we cannot be absolutely certain of anything 
as long as we are ignorant of our own existence. " I Am " 
must be known by itself (per se) : That I Am, so far as 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 169 

I am a being existing in a body (Quatenus res constans 
corpore) is not a primary truth, nor one that can be 
known by itself. " I am " cannot be known as a primary 
truth, except in so far as I think. So far Spinoza 
is expounding Cartesianism pure and simple, and he 
further tells us, without departing from the thought of 
his predecessor, that there are various grades of reality, 
for substance has more reality than accident or mode, 
that infinite substance has more reality than finite ; and 
so the idea of substance has more reality than the idea 
of accident, and the idea of infinite substance has more 
reality than that of finite substance. Passing over the 
part referring to the objective value of ideas, and the 
assertion that the cause of the idea has the reality 
of the idea, formaliter et eminenter, we come to the 
significant part of the exposition, where he diverges 
from the teaching of Descartes. Proposition 5 sets 
forth that the existence of God is known from the mere 
(sola) consideration of His nature. Spinoza waxes 
eloquent over the greatness of this proposition. In 
a scholium he says : " From this proposition many 
magnificent things follow. Verily, from this alone, that 
existence belongs to the nature of God ; or, that the 
conception of God involves the necessary existence 
of God, as the conception of a triangle that its three 
angles are equal to two right angles ; or, that His 
existence not otherwise than His essence, is eternal 
truth ; that almost all the knowledge of the attributes 
of God by which we are led to the love of Him (the 
highest blessedness) depends on this proposition. It is 
therefore greatly to be desired that the human race 
should with us at length embrace this truth." 

To Spinoza the idea of God, as he expressly says, is 



X 



i7o DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

different from the ideas of other things, for God differs 
toto genere from other things. A proposition stating 
that the existence of God can be demonstrated a 
posteriori from our idea of Him leads to another pro- 
position. The existence of God is demonstrated from 
the fact that we who have the idea of God exist. Here 
we come to the parting of the ways. Descartes had 
assumed the two axioms : (1) That whatsoever can effect 
what is greater and more difficult can effect what is 
easier and less ; and (2) it is a greater thing to create 
or preserve substances than the properties or attributes 
of substance. Spinoza says that he does not under- 
stand the meaning of these axioms ; for easier or more 
difficulty have a meaning only in relation to the cause, 
and the language has no meaning as applied to creation. 
And, further, to create substance is to create attributes, 
and to distinguish substance from attributes is possible 
only in abstraction, not in reality. Spinoza having 
stated his objections to the Cartesian axioms, sets forth 
the following lemmas : (1) That by which anything is 
more perfect in its own nature, the greater and the 
more necessary is the existence it involves ; and, on the 
contrary, the more a thing involves necessary existence 
in its own nature, the more perfect it is. (2) That 
which has the power of self-conservation (se con- 
servandi) has necessary existence in its own nature. 
We are here in the very heart of the doctrine of 
Spinoza. The supreme existence is furthest removed 
from nothingness, and from what is accidental or 
contingent. He further distinguishes here between 
necessity which is determined by causation, and that 
necessity which follows from the consideration of the 
nature or essence of a thing, neglecting altogether the 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 171 

notion of its cause. What is perfection, then ? " Per 
perfectionem, intelligo tantum realitem, sive esse; ut 
ex gr. in substantia plus realitatis contineri percipio, 
quam in modis sive accidentibus ; ideoque ipsam magis 
necessariam et perfectionem existentiam continere clare 
intelligo, quam accidentia " (p. 402). 

That which has the power of self -conservation has 
necessary existence, and has all perfections ; but as man, 
a thinking being, has many imperfections he has not 
the power of self-conservation, he is conserved by 
another. Passing on, he seeks to prove that mind and 
body are to be distinguished, that God is the highest 
intelligence, that whatever of perfection is to be found 
in God is from God, there are no more Gods than one, 
that all things that exist are conserved by the power 
of God alone, that God is the Creator of all things, that 
things have no essence from themselves, which is the 
cause of the knowledge of God ; but, on the contrary, 
God is the cause of things even as regards their essence. 
God is the eminently true, and never deceives. What- 
ever is distinctly and clearly perceived is true, and 
error is not something positive. 

So far we have traced the exposition of the Cartesian 
philosophy. It is a fair and able exposition, and he 
departs from the teaching of Descartes as little as 
possible. But he does depart. Into the second part 
we do not enter, for it is mainly an exposition of the 
Cartesian physics, and gives us definitions of extension, 
substance, atom, the indefinite, a vacuum, space. But all 
these things are wrought out with deeper significance 
in the' Cogitatio Meiaphysica, to which we now turn. 

The full title is Metaphysical Cogitations in which 
the more Difficult Questions in Metaphysics, general and 



172 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

special, are briefly treated. The questions mainly are 
about being and its affections, God and His attributes, 
and the human mind. For once we are clear from the 
geometrical form of exposition, and we see that the 
geometrical form is only a form and not essential to 
the thought of Spinoza. He sought to live in the 
whole, to think the whole, and to rest only in the 
perfection which is the whole. This is clearly the 
foundation of all his thinking and striving. 

It is the more difficult questions that attract him. 
He begins with being and its affections, as they are 
commonly called. Being is all that which we find, 
when it is clearly and distinctly understood, to exist 
necessarily, or at least to exist possibly. A chimaira, 
an ens fictura, and an ens rationis are not entities. An 
ens fictum has no reality ; of it we can have no clear 
and distinct perception, for a man out of his mere 
will alone, and not ignorantly as in false things, but 
prudently and knowingly, connects what he wishes to 
connect, and disjoins what he wishes to disjoin. An 
ens rationis is only a mode of thinking which enables 
the intellect to retain, explain, and imagine things 
more readily. He illustrates at some length the ways 
of thinking by which we retain, explain, and imagine 
things. Entia rationis are not ideas of things, and 
they have no ideatum which necessarily or possibly 
exists. These modes of thinking arise from the ideas 
of things so immediately, that they may easily be 
confounded with them by those who do not most 
accurately attend. He lays stress on the distinction 
between things themselves and our modes of perceiving. 
And he substitutes the distinction of substance and 
mode for the distinction of ens reale and ens rationis. 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 173 

" Hence it is easy to see how inept is the division 
between ens reale et ens rationis ; for they divide 
ens into ens and non-ens, or into ens and a mode of 
thinking " (p. 462). There is a being the essence of 
which involves existence, and there is a being the 
essence of which does not involve existence. 

Thus he takes the next step, which is to set forth 
the being of essence, the being of existence ; what is 
the being of the idea, and of potency. What is to be 
understood regarding these four terms he explains in 
what he has to say regarding the uncreated substance, 
or God. All that is formally contained in created 
things is contained really (eminenter) in God. Exten- 
sion we can clearly conceive without existence, but the 
divisibility of space is an imperfection, and imperfec- 
tion cannot be ascribed to God. We are therefore 
constrained to confess that some attribute is present 
in God which contains all the perfections of matter in 
a more excellent way. It is apparent that Spinoza 
has not yet arrived at the thought of God as a res 
extensa, or at the thought that attributes of thought 
and extension equally belong to him. In the next 
place, God understands Himself and all other things ; 
that He has all things objectively in Him. God is 
also the cause of all things, and that He works out of 
the absolute freedom of His will. 

Thus the four kinds of being already mentioned 
may be readily understood. The being of essence is 
nothing else than that mode in which created things 
are comprehended in the attributes of God. The 
being of an idea is so called in so far as all things 
are contained objectively in the idea of God. The 
being of potency is so called only in respect of the 



174 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

potency of God, by which all things not yet in exist- 
ence could be created out of the absolute freedom of 
His will ; and the being of existence is that essence of 
things beyond {extra) God, and considered in them- 
selves, which is attributed to things after they have 
been created by God. In created things these can be 
distinguished ; but in God is no distinction, for in Him 
essence, existence, potency, and intellect are all one. 

Passing, in the third chapter, to the affections of 
being, he explains that by affections he means what 
Descart'es meant by attributes. Of these affections he 
speaks of four : the necessary, the impossible, the 
possible, and the contingent. A thing is necessary in 
respect of its essence or of its cause. In respect of 
His essence, God necessarily exists, for His essence 
cannot be conceived without existence. A chimsera, in 
respect of the implications of its essence, cannot exist. 
In respect of cause, things, for example material things, 
are either impossible or necessary, — impossible because 
they cannot exist without the will of God, and neces- 
sary because God has willed that they exist. In fact, 
a chimsera is only a verbal being ; created things 
depend wholly on God, and the necessity which affects 
them is from a cause — from being, essence, or exist- 
ence ; and these are not to be distinguished in God. 
Possibility and contingency are not affections of things ; 
they are due to defects in our intelligence. We cannot 
say that things might have been contingent, because 
God could have decreed otherwise ; for in eternity there 
is no when, before, or after, nor any affection of time ; 
it follows that God never existed before these decrees 
in order that He might have decreed something else. 
The next question that attracts his attention is that 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 175 

of the freedom of human will in relation to the 
decrees of God. It is noteworthy, because Spinoza has 
not yet reached the ground which he accepts in the 
Ethics. He calls the will free, and yet he says that 
no man wishes to do, or does, anything except what 
God from all eternity has decreed what that man wills 
or does. He leaves the antinomy in its naked sim- 
plicity, as so many have done in the same situation. 
How the two can be reconciled he cannot say. " Quo- 
modo autem id fieri possit, servata humana libertate, 
captum nostrum excedit" (p. 471). "For we clearly 
and distinctly understand that we are free in our 
actions, and can deliberate about many things merely 
because we chose to do so; if we attend also to the 
nature of God, as we have already shown, we clearly 
and distinctly understand that all things depend on 
Him, and that nothing exists unless it was decreed 
from all eternity that it should exist. But how the 
human will should be generated (procreatur) each 
moment in such a way as to remain free, of this we are 
ignorant" (p. 471). 

We shall see afterwards how Spinoza overcame the 
difficulty, mainly by the suppression of one side of it. 
Meanwhile let us follow his meditations. Duration 
and time form the subject of the next chapter. Out 
of the distinction between being whose essence involves 
existence, and being whose essence involves only possible 
existence, arises the distinction between eternity and 
time. Deferring a fuller treatment of eternity, he deals 
with it here only so far as to say that it is the attri- 
bute under which we conceive the infinite existence of 
God, as duration is the attribute under which we con- 
ceive the existence of created things, so far as they 



176 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

persevere in their actuality. Duration cannot be dis- 
tinguished from the existence of anything save in 
thought. By as much as you withdraw Duration from 
anything, by so much you withdraw existence from it. 
To determine Duration we compare it with the duration 
of those things which have a determined motion, which 
we call Time. Thus Time is not an affection of things ; 
it is only a mere mode of thinking, a mode which 
serves for the explanation of duration. Duration is of 
existence, not of essence. Spinoza returns to the dis- 
cussion of eternity in the next book ; here he pro- 
ceeds to treat briefly of Opposition, Order, Agreement, 
Diversity, Subject, Adjunct ; and next takes up the One, 
the True, and the Good. He asks, What is unity and 
what is multitude, and in what respect God may be 
said to be one and in what respect He may be said to 
be unique (unions) ? Unity is not something to be 
distinguished from the thing itself ; it adds nothing 
to the thing: it is a mode of thought by which we 
distinguish the thing from other things which are like 
it, or in some way agree with it. Multitude is also a 
mode of thought. We say that God is one, in so far as 
we separate Him from other beings ; in so far as we 
conceive that there can be no more Gods than one, He 
is called the Only. Properly, however, He can be 
called neither One nor Unique. He finally dismisses 
the question as a mere matter of words. 

True and false are predicates of what has happened ; 
and we say of a narrative, which describes accurately 
what has happened, that it is true. We use the word 
also to describe the correspondence of an idea with 
the reality. A true idea describes the thing accurately, 
a false idea inaccurately. These are not predicates of 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY iff 

things; as such they are improperly used, or rhetori- 
cally only. 

Good and evil are relative terms ; they describe the 
relation of one thing to another which conduces to the 
acquiring of that which it loves, or the contrary. 
Anything may be good or bad in respect of different 
persons. This also is a distinction drawn by reason 
which is not a distinction of things. He illustrates 
from the distinction between Motion and Force. Force 
is nothing else, he says, than the motion itself. The 
reason why we distinguish the conatus from the thing 
itself is because men find in themselves a desire of 
self -conservation, and they imagine such a desire exists 
in everything else. Thus there is no metaphysical 
truth, unity, or good ; these are entia rationis. There 
are many attributes which men ascribe to God — such 
as Creator, Judge, Merciful — which could be potentially 
true before the creation of things. Much might be 
said on this conclusion, which proceeds on the assump- 
tion that the ethical attributes of God have a reference 
only to His relation to the world. A deeper view of 
God finds room for ethical relations within the God- 
head. But such a discussion would lead us too far afield. 

The second part of the Cogitatio deals with the 
attributes of God and with the human mind. The 
attributes dealt with are Eternity, Unity, Immen- 
sity. Immutability, Simplicity, Life, Intellect, Will, 
and Potency; there are articles also on the Creation, 
on the Concursus of God, and on the Human 
Mind. He begins by reminding us that there is in 
rerum natura nothing but substance and modes, and 
that therefore he will not be expected to speak of 
substantial forms, of reals, or of accidents. Substance is 

12 



178 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

found in two principal kinds, Extension and Thought ; 
and Thought appears as created, namely, the human 
mind, and uncreated, or God. Repeating again the de- 
finition of Substance, he proceeds to discuss the eternity 
of God. We cannot attribute duration to God; it is 
only an attribute of the existence, not of the essence of 
things. Eternity belongs to God alone. Duration is 
separable into parts, may be greater or less, and there- 
fore we cannot attribute duration to God. Not only 
in the discussion of the attribute of eternity, but in 
the discussion of other attributes as well, Spinoza is 
jealous of any attribution to God of any attribute 
which might involve any imperfection, becoming, or 
defect. Unity must be construed so that it will involve 
no limitation. Immensity necessarily involves the idea 
of quantity and limitation, and cannot be applied to 
God ; while he believes in the ubiquity of God, yet he 
cannot explain it. Many authors, he tells us, have 
erred in various ways, for they speak of God in lan- 
guage which implies imperfection. The eternity of God 
is God Himself ; the existence of God is God Himself ; 
and so on, for to separate the essence of God from God 
Himself is inconceivable. Then he speaks of the im- 
mutability of God in terms which excite approval and 
delight. From all change, all mutation, He is free. 
The discussion is full of interest, leading to a descrip- 
tion of what change is, and what transformation is. 
In God transformation has no place; mutability comes 
from the operation of external causes ; but God cannot 
be changed by another, nor even by Himself. 

Dealing with the simplicity of God, he recalls to 
mind the threefold distinction of Descartes, namely, that 
things are real, modal, or of reason. Having anew 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 179 

described these, he shows how composition arises, and 
comes back to say that God is the most simple Being, 
and that His attributes are only distinctions of reason. 
Rather, the distinctions between His attributes are 
only distinctions of reason. It would appear that 
Spinoza holds that God is whole in every attribute, 
and that every attribute is God Himself from the point 
of view of that attribute. 

Is life to be predicated of God ? It depends on what 
we understand life to be. If, with the schoolmen, we 
divide spirits into three kinds — vegetative, sensitive, 
and intellectual — and attribute these to plants, brutes, 
and men respectively, it follows that all else is destitute 
of life. Spinoza makes short work of the scholastic 
idea of life. He briefly states that in matter there is 
nothing save mechanical structures (texturas) and 
operations. It is to be noted, however, that if life is 
to be attributed to corporeal things, there is nothing 
without life ; if life be attributed only to souls united 
to bodies, it can be attributed to man alone, and 
perhaps also to animals ; not, indeed, to minds or to 
God. If the meaning of life is to be more widely 
extended, it is to be attributed even to corporeal 
things, to minds not united with bodies, and to minds 
separated from the body. Life, according to Spinoza, 
is the power by which a thing perseveres in its own 
being, and, inasmuch as that power is different from 
the things themselves, they may rightly be said to 
have it. But as the power by which God continues 
in His own being is nothing else than His essence, 
therefore they are right who call God life. It is to be 
observed that in his definition of life Spinoza has lost 
sight of any specific characteristic of life, and identifies 



1 80 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

it with the power by which all things continue in their 
being. The definition is so far true, but it is as true 
of things without life as of things with life. 

Next, he deals with the intellect of God, and claims 
for Him omniscience, and claims this on the ground 
that knowledge is a perfection, and God as the all- 
perfect Being must possess complete knowledge. He 
lays down emphatically the proposition that the object 
of the knowledge of God is not something beyond 
God, but God Himself. From the perfection of God 
it follows that His ideas are not terminated as ours are 
by objects placed beyond God. It is an error to say 
that there is a matter, eternal and external, to God on 
which He works; and it is equally an error to say 
that to God there are things impossible, necessary, or 
contingent, for that would be to suppose that He is 
ignorant whether they exist or not. It is an error, 
also, to suppose that He knows things from circum- 
stances, as men do through a long experience. God is 
the object of His own knowledge; those who say that 
the world is the object of the knowledge of God are 
less wise than those who say that the building raised 
by some illustrious architect is the object of his know- 
ledge. We are here reminded of the self-thinking 
thought of Aristotle, and of the modern contention that 
the object of the revelation of God is God Himself. 

In what way does God know sins, beings of reason, 
and other similar things ? The answer is, that 
God necessarily understands those things of which 
He is the cause, because they could not be without the 
divine concursus. " Cum ergo mala et peccat in rebus 
nihil est, sed tantum in mente hum ana, res inter se 
comparante ; sequitur, Deum ipsa extra mentes humanas 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 181 

non cognoscere," (p. 489). Entia rationis are modes of 
thinking and are understood by God, in so far as He 
preserves and continually creates the human minds 
of whose thinking these are the modes. Those 
people seem to err with delight, and to think 
absurdly who are of opinion that God knows only 
eternal things which are by nature unbegotten and 
incorruptible, and nothing of the world save species 
which are unbegotten and incorruptible. What can 
be more absurd than to suppose that those particular- 
things which cannot exist for a moment without the 
concursus of God are shut out from His knowledge ? 
There is only one simple purpose of God. Created 
things are various and multiform, but the idea of 
God, by which we describe His omniscience, is one 
and most simple. " Denique si ad analogiam totius 
NaturaB attendimus, ipsam ut unum Ens considerare 
possumus, et per consequens una tantum erit Dei 
idea sive decretum de Natura naturata" (p. 490). 

On the will of God he begins with a disclaimer of 
knowledge. For he says that he places among the 
desiderata, how to distinguish between the essence of 
God, His intellect by which He knows Himself, and His 
will by which He wills to love Himself. Spinoza is not 
unmindful of the notion of personality which theologians 
are wont to use to explain this difficulty. But 
although he does not ignore the word, he finds it 
impossible to form a clear and distinct idea of it, 
" although we firmly believe that in the most blessed 
vision of God, which is promised to the faithful, God 
will reveal this to His own. Will and power quoad 
extra are not distinguished from the intellect of God, 
for God hath not only decreed that things should 



182 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

exist, but that they should exist so that their essence 
and existence should depend on His will and power. 
From which we perceive clearly and distinctly that 
the intellect, power, and will of God, by which He has 
created, understood, and preserved, or loved created 
things, are in no way to be distinguished among 
themselves, but only in respect of our thought" 
(p. 491). Having illustrated the statement that God 
has some things in hatred, from a quotation from 
St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, he asks : " Why, 
then, does God admonish men ? God from all eternity 
decreed to admonish men at that certain time, that 
they whom He willed to be saved might be converted " 
(p. 491). The view is so strange as coming from Spinoza 
that we quote the following : " Could not God have 
saved them without that admonition ? He could. Why, 
then, did He not save them ? To this I will reply 
after you have told me why God did not cause the 
Red Sea to flow backwards without a vehement east 
wind, and why He does not accomplish all particular 
motions without others, and why God does infinite 
things by means of intermediate causes ? Why are 
the wicked punished, for they act according to their 
nature, and according to the divine decree ? But 
I reply, it is of the divine decree that they are 
punished, and if only those whom we feign to sin 
out of their own freedom are to be punished, why 
do men attempt to exterminate venomous serpents ? " 
(p. 491). He concludes this chapter with a statement 
that the sacred page teaches nothing repugnant to the 
light of nature. 

How the omnipotence of God is to be understood 
is his next inquiry. He first sets aside what he 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 183 

considers to be errors, and affirms that all things 
absolutely depend on God. He divides the power of 
God into ordinate and absolute : ordinate power when 
we have regard to His decrees, and absolute power 
when we do not attend to His decrees. He also makes 
a distinction between ordinary and extraordinary 
power ; ordinary power being that by which the world 
is preserved in a certain order, extraordinary power 
when he does anything prcrter ordinem naturce — for 
example, all miracles, such as the speaking of an ass, 
apparition of angels, and so on. He next deals with 
creation, which he thus describes. Creation is that 
operation in which no causes co-operate beyond 
(prceter) the sufficient cause, or a created thing is 
that which presupposes for its existence nothing 
beyond God. The vulgar definition of creation he 
professes to reject, and he explicates in some detail 
the particulars of his own definition. Accidents and 
modes are not created; there was neither time nor 
duration before creation. Creation and Preserva- 
tion are the same divine operation. He proceeds to 
inquire into the nature of created and uncreated 
being, and to ask if what is created could have been 
created from eternity. He points out how divine 
differ from human thoughts, that there is nothing extra 
Dewm, and that although God is eternal it does not 
follow that His works are eternal. A little impatience 
is manifested with those whom he imagines to be 
his opponents, and he finally says that it all turns 
on the distinction between eternity and duration; 
that duration is unintelligible apart from created 
things, and eternity is unintelligible without God. 
A chapter " De concursu Dei " completes this part of 



1 84 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

the book, and then he proceeds to deal with the human 
mind. As he concludes this part he turns once more 
to the theologians, and in answer to them uses a 
metaphor which appears in the Ethics also. He speaks 
of the theological division of the attributes of God 
into communicable and incommunicable, and says 
that it is a distinction more of words than of things. 
For the knowledge of God no more agrees with the 
knowledge of man than the dog-star with the dog 
that barks. 

Speaking of human mind, well, it will be better to 
postpone this until we come to deal with the corres- 
ponding portion of the Ethics. There is nothing in 
it which is not in the Ethics, nor do we find here 
anything inconsistent with the fuller teaching con- 
tained in the later work. It is different with the 
other parts of the Cogitatio Metaphysica. There the 
problems presented to the mind of Spinoza have not 
assumed the form which they have in the Ethics. 
While the determination to proceed from the reality 
of being, to assume the reality and positive character 
of the absolute and infinite, and the derivative and 
imperfect character of the finite is present in both 
works, in the earlier work the freedom of man is still 
a problem, the relation of God to the world is thought 
of under the thought of a decree, and he hesitates to 
make the world the " other " of God. The absoluteness 
of God becomes more absolute, and the initial ten- 
dency of his system works itself out even to acosmism. 
The Cogitatio reminds us of the thinking of Jonathan 
Edwards, the great American thinker, between whom 
and Spinoza there are many resemblances, particularly 
the love of " Being " in general, but on this we do not 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 185 

dwell. What we do see in Spinoza, as his thought 
proceeds from its expression in the Cogitatio to the 
form of the Ethics, is that he moves away from 
many aspects of the problem present in the former 
work, to their entire suppression in the latter. Free- 
dom has disappeared, the relative independence of 
the world— r-relatively independent at least so far as 
to be the subject of a decree — has vanished, and the 
Natara naturans has its necessary outcome in the 
Natwra naturata. He will not continue to speak 
of the absolute freedom of the Divine Will. He has 
warned us, in the earlier work, that this is only a 
mode of thought, or, perhaps less, a mode of speech. 
But in the later work, at least in the earlier part of 
it, the personal character of God and His distinction 
from the world, which clung to Spinoza, has vanished, 
and the wholeness of the whole alone remains. Yet 
only in the earlier part of the Ethics is the tendency 
from the personal God to the To 6v of Aryan specu- 
lation so far complete : in the later part, Substance 
takes back to itself the characteristics of the Jehovah 
of the Hebrews, and Spinoza is still the Hebrew, who 
still feels the weight of the burden handed down to 
him from of old. 



CHAPTER X 

The Ethics— The First Two Books— Substance— God— Proofs of 
the Existence of God — Their Validity — Exclusion of ethical 
Conceptions from Reality — The Indeterminate — Determina- 
tion — Power and Activity — Modes — Unity and Difference — 
Freedom and Self-determination — Degrees of Reality — 
Natura naturans and Natura naturata — Freedom — Teleology 
— Substance, Attribute, Mode — Dr. Ward on Teleology. 

The final form of the teaching of Spinoza is found 
in the Ethics. It is in geometrical form, with all the 
machinery of definitions, axioms, lemmas, postulates, 
and corollaries, with which geometricians have made 
us familiar. It adds to the difficulty of understanding 
his theory of Reality, for a theory of Reality it is. 
In order to appreciate the Ethics we must keep in 
mind the other works of Spinoza, especially the Corres- 
pondence. In truth, there is no part of his works 
which can be neglected in the attempt to appreciate 
his philosophy. We have not space to follow in 
detail the definitions, axioms, and so on; we must be 
content with a briefer mode of treatment. 

God or Substance is one — absolutely infinite, indivis- 
ible, self-determined, eternal, conceived through itself 
alone; and because it is so it possesses attributes 
infinite in number, and each infinite in its kind, 
eternal, and indivisible. While Substance must be 

186 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 187 

regarded as possessed of infinite attributes, yet as 
apprehended by the finite intelligence of man it is 
regarded as possessed of two only, that is to say, 
only two of these attributes can be apprehended by 
man. These are Thought and Extension. Substance, 
then, as apprehended by man is apprehended under 
Thought and Extension, and the modes of Substance 
are those finite presentations of it which are perceived 
by the senses and imagination as individual things 
or ideas. The modes are always finite, divisible, 
transitory, and dependent. Everything is included 
in the scheme of Substance, Attribute, Mode. 

For Spinoza, Substance and God are '^Tactically 
terms of the same extent of meaning. His main aim 
in his definitions is to get rid of anthropomorphism. 
The God whose name occurs so often in his writings 
is not thought of by him in the terms used by 
theologians or other philosophers. He is not thought 
of as Creator, as Ruler, Judge, nor does he think 
of God as Christian theologians do. Spinoza regards 
the use of the terms of intellect, will, moral qualities, 
even personality, as altogether inapplicable to God, 
and he definitely and resolutely excludes them from 
the nature of God. Substance is that which is in 
itself, and is conceived through itself. God is defined 
as a " Being absolutely infinite, that is, Substance 
consisting of infinite attributes, of which each one 
expresses eternal and infinite essence." Attribute is 
what the intellect perceives as constituting the essence 
of Substance. We find in the Propositions that exist- 
ence belongs to the nature of Substance, and Proposi- 
tion 8 with its corollaries shows it to be infinite and 
one, which identifies it with God. In Proposition 11 



1 88 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

the identification is complete. God or Substance, con- 
sisting of infinite attributes of which each expresses 
eternal and infinite essence, necessarily exists; and 
Proposition 20 identifies existence and essence in 
God. " The existence of God and His essence are 
one and the same." 

Taking these statements, and not asking at present 
how they agree with or differ from the conception 
of God as current among men, we ask what was the 
meaning of Spinoza, looking only at the question as 
a theory of Reality. It seems evident that Spinoza 
meant by God, Substance, Causa sui: and by all the 
terms he uses, the description of Reality as a whole, 
Universal Existence, or Being itself. Existence is, and 
is a system ; it is real as the unity of thought and 
being, and as the final interpretation of both subjective 
and objective experience. In Being, as such, there is no 
limitation, no imperfection ; limitation and determina- 
tion ah extra is the characteristic of finite being, for 
finiteness is precisely that which limits finite existence. 
So Spinoza in many places consistently declares. All 
determination is negation, so there is in the infinite 
Substance only self-determination. 

The proofs of the necessary existence of God are full 
of interest, and of these there are four alternate forms, 
each of which has its interest. They are proofs, only 
from Spinoza's point of view. Take his definition 
of God, or Substance, as existence without limit or 
qualification, and he says, grant that anything is actual 
and you must grant that God is actual ; or, admit that 
anything exists necessarily, then the being which is self- 
dependent exists necessarily. " We must exist either in 
ourselves or in something else that necessarily exists, 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 189 

therefore a Being absolutely infinite necessarily exists." 
The proofs are valid if we grant Spinoza's concep- 
tion of God. We do not need to prove existence, 
what we need is to define its character. It is to be 
noted that perfection is used by Spinoza in his own 
sense ; it means only completeness of existence, and is 
not to be understood as if it implied moral or mental 
qualities. For these — such as wisdom, justice, goodness 
— are not suitable conceptions for the characterisation 
of being in its absolute and eternal infinity. Spinoza 
really takes his stand on the fact of existence, and 
affirms that if there be existence at all it must be 
somehow complete. Incomplete existence, taken by 
itself, is self -contradictory. 

But of what kind is this Being? Is it the empty 
abstraction of Being in general ? Is it mere substance 
without a predicate ? Is it that vaguest and most 
barren of all abstractions which Hegel characterises as 
equivalent to its opposite — nothingness ? 

On any view, Being must be, and it must be real and 
concrete. It must have not merely the blank form of 
existence ; it must contain within itself all determina- 
tions, all relations, in the unity of one system. This is 
the criterion of a system of philosophy which is to be 
an adequate and final interpretation of experience. 
How does the philosophy of Spinoza stand the test ? 
He professes to avoid abstract terms, and is consistent 
in looking at abstractions as due to the limitations of 
human intelligence. He asserts that the more general 
and abstract a term is, the further it is removed from 
reality. The question arises, has he succeeded in 
getting rid of abstractions, or is he still in bondage to 
them, his defiance of them notwithstanding ? 



ipo DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

He is persuaded that he is dealing with a real, 
concrete universe. He seeks to start from fact, not 
from an idea. Being as the essence, truth, and fulness 
of all that is, is his datum, and his apparent deduction 
is simply the explication of his initial assumption. 
Taking Being as a whole, in its perfection and com- 
pleteness as a system, and this is his postulate : he is 
right in affirming of it that it is without limit, number, 
or change. But there is a system of existing things 
which is determinate, divisible, subject to change, and 
finite. How is the one system to be deduced from the 
other ? How can the concreteness of the whole and 
its wholeness consist with the changeableness of the 
Natura naturata ? It is the old problem of perman- 
ence and change, or rather the older problem of the one 
and the many, of unity and difference. 

There is another problem which presses with great 
weight on the system of Spinoza. He affirms of God 
that He is absolutely indeterminate. In Letter 41 he 
says: "Determination is nothing positive, but only a 
limitation of the existence of the nature conceived as 
determinate." The question arises, how do determina- 
tions arise ? Spinoza endeavours to answer by his 
doctrine of Attributes and Modes. " By Attribute I 
mean the same thing, except that it is called Attribute 
with respect to the understanding, which attributes to 
Substance the particular nature aforesaid." This is 
from Letter 27, in which he had written : " By 
Substance I mean that which is in itself and is con- 
ceived through itself, that is, of which the conception 
does not involve the conception of anything else." 
The definition of the Ethics is : " That which the intellect 
perceives with regard to Substance as constituting its 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 191 

essence. " The construction most favourable for the 
system of Spinoza is that which interprets the attributes 
as infinite expressions of the all-inclusive infinite 
Substance. Yet the difficulty meets us, that these 
expressions are relative to our apprehension ; for they 
are what the intellect apprehends with regard to 
Substance as constituting its essence. Even if the 
attributes are the essence of Substance as apprehended, 
we can scarcely avoid the conclusion that the essence 
apprehended is relative to the intellect that apprehends, 
and is without significance to the substance itself. It 
is not enough to say that the attribute is God's attri- 
bute, though it is God's nature as viewed by man. 
The polemic of Spinoza against the attribution of 
moral attributes to God is quite as effective against 
his own view of the attributes. 

The attributes which express the essence of God are 
related to the modes, and each mode expresses in a 
determinate manner some attribute of God. The modes 
are only the manner in which the infinite essence 
gives expression to itself. We are met here with the 
difficulty that the modes are regarded negatively as 
limited, and as such are marked off from the infinite 
Substance. In so far as a mode expresses the ultimate 
Substance it is positive. How are we to explain these 
positive and negative aspects ? 

Returning to the consideration of the indeterminate, 
which is for him the main characteristic of the infinite 
Substance, we ask, how does he reconcile this indeter- 
minate with the conception that in it all determinate 
being has its ground or cause ? From indeterminates 
as such no inference can be drawn. Purely indeter- 
minate and abstract being, characterised by no positive 



192 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

mark, — for any such mark would make it determinate, 
— how can such being enter on a course of evolution ? 
How is one to pass from pure indeterminateness to the 
determinations that are requisite in order that substance 
should be real ? This is, however, not the only view of 
Substance which is to be found in Spinoza. Frequently 
he speaks of Substance as the ens realissimum, the 
sum, or the system of all possible reality, in which are 
infinite attributes, each of which expresses eternal and 
infinite essence, and which contains all possible perfec- 
tion. He has both conceptions, and he wavers between 
them. But if he insists on the perfect fulness of 
reality, and uses it as the ground of determinate 
existence, he must let the indeterminates go, and must 
look at Substance as determinate being, only that the 
ground of its determinateness is in itself and not in 
another. This is, in fact, what he does when he says 
that Substance is Causa sui. The truth is, that in this 
crucial place, that is, in the way of connection of the 
ultimate ground of things with the infinite diversity of 
finite modes, there is no possible way of transition. 
For the determination of particular things into their 
particularity being negative, this negative element has 
to be explained, and from the notion of Substance, 
whether it is considered as the indeterminate or as the 
ens realissimum, no explanation is forthcoming. 

May an explanation be found in the thought that 
God's power is identical with His essence, and that He 
is activity itself ? In the Scholium to Ethics, Part II. 
Proposition 3, he says : " We have shown that God acts 
by the same necessity as that by which He understands 
Himself ; in other words, as it follows from the necessity 
of the divine nature (as all admit) that God under- 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 193 

stands Himself, so by the same necessity it follows that 
God performs infinite acts in infinite ways. We further 
showed that God's power is God's essence in action, 
therefore it is as impossible for us to conceive God as 
not acting as to conceive Him as non-existent." Being 
is and acts, and the infinite things which come from 
His infinite nature He necessarily does. Is there here a 
way of connecting substance with its modes, and a way 
of reconciling the negative determination of particular 
existence with the causality of God ? We are told in 
successive propositions, e.g., (14) Besides God no sub- 
stance can be granted or conceived; (15) whatever is, is 
in God, and without God nothing can be, or be con- 
ceived; (16) from the necessity of the divine nature 
must follow an infinite number of things in infinite 
ways, that is, all things which fall within the sphere 
of the infinite intellect; (17) God acts solely by the 
laws of His own nature, and is not constrained 
by any one; and (18) God is the immanent and not 
the transient cause of all things. We ask, in passing, 
how all these agree with the notion of the indeter- 
minateness of Substance ? Surely these conceptions 
are determinate enough, and when we put them to- 
gether we reach the conception that God is determinate 
Being, though the reason of His determinateness is 
from Himself. Again, it is scarcely consistent with the 
proposition " Omnis determinatio est negatio " to affirm 
(Prop. 9) : " Quo plus realitatis aut esse unaquaeque res 
habet, eo plura attributa ipsi competunt." From the 
statement that determination is negative we should 
expect the conclusion, that the more the determinations 
the greater would the negations be ; and as every attri- 
bute of finite things is a determination, the more the 
J 3 



194 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

attributes are, the less would the reality be. We shall 
have to invert the axiom and say, " Omnis determinate 
est affirmatio," which would be as true as the other. 

How to make the transition from the unity of the 
substance to the manifoldness of the real world is the 
pressing question. Is it to be accomplished by the 
thought that God is Actus punts ? As to the causality 
of God, Spinoza says with emphasis, that God is the 
cause of all things and of Himself, the cause not only 
of their becoming but also of their persistence. He is 
a unique cause, for, in the ordinary meaning of cause, 
it is only a link in the chain of things ; but God is not 
determined to be or to act by anything ah extra. As 
there is nothing within or without God to prompt Him 
to act, He is the (free) cause of all things ; " for God 
exists by the sole necessity of His nature, and acts by 
the sole necessity of His nature, wherefore God is the 
sole free cause " (Prop. 17, Cor. 2). Note the identifica- 
tion of freedom with the self-determined or completely 
necessary. There is no fate, no external order, no 
ideal even, which could be a motive or cause of the 
divine action. God's nature is in every way complete. 
" From the supreme power of God, that is, from His 
infinite nature, an infinite number of things have 
necessarily flowed forth in an infinite number of ways. 
All things flow forth with the same necessity from the 
divine nature, as from the nature of a triangle it 
follows, from eternity, that its three interior angles are 
equal to two right angles. The omnipotence of God 
has been actual from eternity, and to eternity will 
persist in the same actuality " {Ethics, 1. 17, Sch.). That 
necessity or self-determination which makes the 
causality of God free makes freedom, contingency, or 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 195 

possibility out of the question; the existent order of 
nature in all its parts could not have been otherwise 
than it is. Possibility or contingency arises, as a con- 
ception, only from our imperfect knowledge. 

Deferring for the moment the polemic against the 
freedom of the will and final causes, we ask, have we, 
through the account of the causality, found any way 
of reconciling the unity of things with their existence 
in a determinate system ? We have in truth passed 
from the conception of causality altogether, and are in 
the sphere of logical reason and consequent. The con- 
nection of triangularity with the property of a triangle 
instanced cannot be regarded as identical with the 
relation of cause and effect. The knot is cut, not un- 
tied, and the system of things is looked at from two 
points of view — that of cause and that of effect ; and as 
the notions of time and change are eliminated there is no 
mediation between the two. For the notion of cause 
is in relation to change, and the meaning of the word 
is strained when it is looked at sub specie cetemitatis. 
Thus the outcome of the system of Spinoza is to sub- 
stitute for the variety of a manifold world, with a 
movement of growth in space and time, the supposi- 
tion of a system of relations, in which there is no 
before or after, in which any part has its place and 
function in virtue of the eternal causality of God. It 
is curious to note how differently the notions of space 
and time are dealt with by him. Space becomes one 
of the attributes of God, indeed one of the two by 
which men can know Him. God is a res extensa. On 
the other hand, time, in his hands, becomes purely sub- 
jective, a form which owes its speciousness to the defect 
of the finite mind. Mathematicians tell us that time 



196 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

is the only independent variable, that it is of one 
dimension, and metaphysicians tell us that it is the 
form of the inner sense. But both the mathematicians 
and the metaphysicians tell us that we cannot think 
independently of time, any more than motion out of 
place is possible. Eliminate time, say that it is merely 
a defect of finite intelligence, and the universe becomes 
for us, as for Spinoza, something in which there is no 
when, before, or after ; and if it is to be an intelligible 
system, it must be regarded as a system of permanent 
relations, each of which is as valuable as any other. 

No doubt Spinoza assures us that the more directly 
a thing owes its being and persistence to the caus- 
ality of God, the more of perfection it has. What 
owes its being directly to His attributes has more 
perfection than that which owes itself to the modes. 
In this way some kind of gradation finds a place in 
his system, but the gradation is more apparent than 
real. Is there a unity in difference in his system ? 
One would like to think so. But the indeterminate- 
ness of substance stands between us and that conclu- 
sion. Still, he aimed at the construction of a system that 
would manifest unity in difference, or that unity which 
expresses itself in difference. At first sight the scheme 
of Substance, Attribute, Mode, seems to show that Sub- 
stance, Attribute, Mode are the ways in which being 
must of necessity express itself. But that would lead 
to the conclusion that determination is a characteristic 
of God, and we are warned off from that conclusion by 
the express teaching about His indeterminateness. He 
tells us, again, that " particular things are nothing but 
affections of God's attributes, or modes by which God's 
attributes are expressed in a determinate and definite 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 197 

way" (Part I. Prop. 25, Cor.). This would seem to 
secure for particular things some kind of individuality, 
but it does not show how particular things have their 
place in a system of reality. In other words, Spinoza 
scarcely seems to think of a whole, in which each 
thing has its special part and function ; he is so careful 
to avoid anthropomorphism that he neglects many of 
the most fruitful categories of explanation. Particular 
things are in time, and time is a mere help to the 
imagination, and the apprehension of particular things 
is so far an illusion. 

In Proposition 29, Scholium, he says : " I wish to ex- 
plain what is to be understood by Natara naturans and 
Natara naUcrata, or rather to point it out. From what 
has been said before, it is sufficiently clear that by 
Natara naturans is to be understood by us that which 
is in itself, and is conceived through itself, or such attri- 
butes of substance as express infinite and eternal essence, 
— that is, God, in so far as He is considered as a free 
cause. By Natara naturata I understand all that 
which follows out of {ex) the necessity of the nature 
of God, or of any one of the attributes of God — that 
is, all the modes of the attributes of God, in so far as 
they are considered as things in God, and which cannot 
be, or be conceived, without God." Proposition 21 : God 
as cause and God as effect, or rather God as ground and 
God as consequent, is the substance of the paragraph. 
But neither relationship expresses his meaning exactly. 
If we take the relation as that of cause and effect, 
we are landed in the supposition of priority of the 
one to the other, and that involves the idea of time. 
If the relation of ground and consequence rules, then 
we are constrained to think of the ground as in- 



198 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

complete without the consequence. The difficulty in 
either case is that we have to think of relations and 
differences within the one, and we have no way of 
thinking them. For cause and effect, ground and con- 
sequence are relations, and relations are not at home 
in the indeterminate. 

As we follow the evolution of his thought along one 
side of it, we find that Spinoza holds that God is ab- 
solutely one in all the states of His being. Everything 
that is and works, manifests God. In His essentia or 
potentia all realities are comprehended, and His power 
is actual in all the grades of reality. As we pass to 
the consideration of Natura naturata, and to finite 
being, we are confronted with limitations and nega- 
tions which are unexplained. Are these limitations or 
defects only illusions, entia rationis which have no bear- 
ing on God, but only a bearing on finite things ? Then 
in the Natura naturata we have only an appearance, 
and specially the world of things in time and space is 
an illusion. God, let us remember, is wholly one, and 
in that oneness He must contain all the characteristic 
marks which complete knowledge could find in the 
real. All perfections are in Him, and He is the actual- 
isation of all possible existence. Reality extends far 
beyond those attributes of Thought and Extension by 
which God is apprehended in the human intellect. 
How are the attributes related to the one substance ? 
and how are they related to each other ? There is no 
answer to this question. The attributes are separate 
and distinct from each other, they are related only to 
the substance, and yet there is no possibility of thinking 
them as varieties of the one substance. From the 
unbroken unity of the substance to the side-by-side- 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 199 

ness of the attributes there is no transition. Even in 
relation to the infiniteness of the attributes the prin- 
ciple of determinateness or negation must enter in, for 
they are distinct from each other. It is not possible to 
hold together the conception of God as exclusive of 
all determination, and as comprehending an infinite 
diversity of ultimate attributes, each of which is 
different from the others. As a scheme for the uniting 
of the one and the many, it becomes more incoherent 
the more it is examined. 

Passing to his polemic against freedom and final 
- causes, we have to remark that in this connection we 
shall find that Spinoza makes abundant use of the 
principle of illusion as a source of explanation or a 
means of explaining away what is inconsistent with the 
principles of his philosophy. In the long run the appeal 
must be to the experience of man, for in the end a system 
of philosophy must be the interpretation of experience. 
It need not be empirical, but it must interpret experience 
and be consistent with experience. In truth, every 
philosophy admits the claim, and all philosophies admit 
that they must satisfy it. If any experience is held 
to be illusive the illusiveness must be explained, not 
simply declared dogmatically to be illusive. What, 
then, is the basis of Spinoza's polemic against freedom ? 
In Letter 62 he says : " I say that a thing is free 
which exists and acts solely by the necessity of its 
own nature. Thus God also understands Himself 
and all things freely, because it follows solely from the 
necessity of His nature that He should understand all 
things. You see, I do not place freedom in free de- 
cision, but in free necessity. However, let us descend 
to created things, which are all determined by external 



200 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

things to exist and operate in a given determinate 
manner. In order that this may be clearly understood, 
let us conceive a very simple thing. For instance, a 
stone receives from the impulsion of an external cause 
a certain quantity of motion, by virtue of which it 
continues to move after the impulsion given by 
the external cause has ceased. The permanence of 
the stone's motion is constrained, not necessary, because 
it must be defined by the impulsion of an external 
cause. What is true of the stone is true of any indi- 
vidual, however complicated its nature or varied its 
functions, inasmuch as every individual thing is neces- 
sarily determined by some external cause to exist and 
operate in a fixed and determinate manner" (Elwes' 
Trans., vol. ii. p. 390). " Men think themselves free, 
inasmuch as they are conscious of their volitions and 
desires, and never even dream in their ignorance of 
the causes which have disposed them so to wish and 
desire." Imagine a stone to be conscious and know 
that it endeavours to persist in its motion. This stone, 
since it is conscious only of its own endeavour and 
deeply interested in it, will believe that it is perfectly 
free, and continues in motion for no other reason than 
that it so wills. This is the illustration of the illusion 
of will and freedom given by him in a subsequent 
part of the letter quoted above. We ask, is it an 
adequate interpretation of human experience in its 
consciousness of freedom ? The answer must be, No. 
For even though action and reaction are always equal 
and opposite, yet the reaction from a kick to a stone 
is one thing, and the reaction from a kick to a dog is 
another thing. The last may be rather inconvenient 
to the kicker. From Spinoza's practice we gather that 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 201 

he was in the way of thinking twice, and exercised the 
freedom of striving to bring his thoughts into con- 
sistency with truth. Was he, then, ignorant of the 
causes which disposed him to think again and again ? 
It may be true, it likely is, that freedom is self-deter- 
mination, but it is implied that the self can determine 
itself to something. Man can form an ideal for him- 
self, and if he can, all the contentions of Spinoza are 
irrelevant. Abstract from the inner life, and look at 
man as a link in the chain of things, and you may 
describe him in Spinoza's terms ; take into consideration 
all the elements of the problem, and take account of 
the self-conscious life of man, and freedom must be 
regarded as real. We can look before and after, and 
pine for what is not. We can dream dreams, and see 
visions, and give to airy nothing a local habitation and 
a name. There are such things as books, houses, cities, 
ships, railways, — all the multiform and multitudinous 
works of man, — all of which prove that human voli- 
tions and human activities count for something in the 
scheme of things. 

We appeal to the example of Spinoza against the 
mere determinism of Spinoza. He is himself an 
example of the truth that human volition and human 
activity is a vera causa. For his system is his own, 
and is as much poetry as philosophy. It is a great 
illustration of the reality of human freedom, and of the 
worth of human activity. He had a high ideal of con- 
duct, — was that the work in him of an external cause? 
He shaped his conduct after that ideal — why ? He 
held the doctrine of the activity of human intelligence, 
and in his hands that activity produced something, — 
did his intelligence simply move as it was moved ? 



202 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

Our contention is, that Spinoza ignored altogether, or 
explained away, some of the most essential features 
of our experience. As he denied freedom, so he also 
denied final cause. Bacon had called final causes 
vestal virgins which could produce no fruit. Descartes 
had in pretended humility ignored them ; it was 
reserved for Spinoza to treat them as illusions, mere 
subjectivities whose very existence depended on the 
ignorance and finiteness of man. He is aware of the 
fact " that men do all things for an end, namely, for 
that which is useful to them, and which they seek. 
Thus it comes to pass that they only look for a 
knowledge of the final causes of events, and when 
these are learned they are content, as having no 
cause for further doubt. If they cannot learn such 
causes from external sources they are compelled to 
turn to considering themselves, and reflecting what 
end would have induced them personally to bring 
about the given event, and thus they judge necessarily 
other natures by their own. Further, as they find 
in themselves and outside themselves many means 
which assist them not a little in their search for 
what is useful, — for instance, eyes for seeing, teeth 
for chewing, herbs and animals for yielding food, 
the sun for giving light, the sea for breeding fish, 
etc., — they come to look on the whole of nature as 
a means for obtaining such conveniences " (Book I., 
Appendix). So prone is man to such a mode of 
thought that the truth might have been concealed 
from him to all eternity "if mathematics had not 
furnished a standard of verity, in considering solely 
the essence and properties of figures without regard 
to final causes." There is no doubt in the mind of 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 203 

Spinoza about cause; he regards it as true, effective, 
and necessary. Causality as power is at the basis 
of his system, and is the nerve of his argument. 
Yet the days to come have revealed the possibility 
of making the idea of cause as subjective as Spinoza 
made the idea of final cause. All students of philo- 
sophy know Hume, and he made the source of the 
idea of cause to be custom. And any argument that 
answers Hume regarding cause will answer Spinoza 
regarding final cause. 

At all events, some explanation of man's belief in 
final cause is needed, and if it be an illusion the rise 
of the illusion should be accounted for. It is a matter 
of fact; nature is amenable to our ends, and we can 
make ourselves at home in this world. The teleo- 
logical aspect of things has been made vivid to us 
all by the great work of Darwin and his followers, 
who have made evolution almost a form of modern 
thought. A purpose and a meaning is sought for 
with regard to every animal, and to every part of 
every animal, down to the colour of animals and birds. 
Life is teleological through and through. The normal 
activity of man is activity for an end. Activity 
prompted by intelligent purpose, and conscious voli- 
tion aiming at a foreseen and designed result, is the 
character of human intelligence. From this point of 
view every activity of man is teleological, whether 
he is building railways, cathedrals, or thinking out 
the principles of their construction. Teleological also 
is the activity of Newton when he thinks out the 
Principia, and of Spinoza in writing his Ethics. In 
fact, Spinoza himself tells us so. But his action was 
teleological in a deeper sense, for the desire to know, 



204 THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

even where practice does not follow, is for an 
end. 

Spinoza also helps us against himself when he has 
laid so strong a stress on the principle of self-conser- 
vation. It is a most important and far-reaching prin- 
ciple, and naturalists tell us that a living machine 
is one that does not depend on external impulses for 
its movements. That is the principle of the self- 
conservation of animals, and it is teleological. See 
the able discussion in Dr. Ward's Gifford Lecture : 
" We have seen," says Dr. Ward, " that the process 
of natural knowledge is teleological in its origin, 
since it was prompted and sustained by practical 
motives. Also, that the conception of natural law is 
teleological in its character, — first, inasmuch as it is 
hypothetical, and every hypothesis is means to an 
end, a theoretical organon that may or may not work ; 
secondly, and more specially, inasmuch as the hypo- 
thesis is that Nature will conform to the conditions 
of our intelligence. ... It being in general granted 
that our conception of the unity and regularity of 
Nature is entitled to the name of knowledge — being 
ever confirmed, never falsified, by experience — we are 
now equally entitled to say that this unity and 
regularity of nature proves that nature itself is teleo- 
logical, and that in two respects : — (1) It is conformable 
to human intelligence, and (2) in consequence it is 
amenable to human ends" (Dr. Ward's Naturalism 
and Agnosticism, vol. ii. pp. 253, 254). 



CHAPTER XI 

Application of the Principles of the System to the Life of Man — 
Reply to the Charge of Atheism —Definitions — Res cogitans 
et res externa — The adequate Idea — Kant on the Question 
how Things are given us — A Science of Nature — Properties 
of Matter — Parallelism — Association of Ideas — Knowledge — 
The three Kinds of Knowledge — Sub specie ceternitatis — 
Will and Understanding — Will and Desire. 

In the Preface to the second part of the Ethics 
Spinoza explains the plan and purpose of the rest 
of the book. " I now pass on to explaining the results 
which must necessarily follow from the essence of 
God, or of the eternal and infinite Being ; not indeed 
all of them, but only those which are able to lead 
us, as it were by the hand, to the knowledge of the 
human mind and its highest blessedness" (Elwes, 
vol. ii. p. 82). From a scheme of the inevitable 
necessity of things he has to explain the nature of 
man and man's place in Nature, and to develop a 
system of ethics and politics which will do some 
justice to the facts of human life and character. He 
is quite conscious of the nature of his task, and 
he does not shrink from it. In Letter 49 he says, 
in answer to the charge that he had thrown off 
all religion: "I would ask whether a man throws 
off all religion who maintains that God must 

205 



206 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

be acknowledged as the highest good, and must, 
as such, be loved with a free mind ? or again, 
that the reward of virtue is virtue itself, while the 
punishment of folly and wickedness is folly itself ? 
or lastly, that every man ought to love his neigh- 
bour, and to obey the commands of the Supreme 
Power ? . . . I proceed to the deduction whereby he 
wishes to show that, 'with covert and disguised 
arguments, I teach atheism.' The foundation of his 
reasoning is, that he thinks I take away freedom from 
God and subject Him to fate. This is flatly false. For 
I have maintained, that all things follow by inevitable 
necessity from the nature of God, that He understands 
Himself; no one denies that this latter consequence 
follows necessarily from the divine nature, yet no 
one conceives that God is constrained by fate ; they 
believe that He understands Himself with entire 
freedom, though necessarily. . . . Further, this in- 
evitable necessity in things destroys neither divine 
laws nor human. For moral principles, whether they 
have received from God the form of laws or not, 
are nevertheless divine and salutary. Whether we 
accept the good which follows from virtue and the 
divine love, as given us by God as a judge, or as 
emanating from the necessity of the divine nature, 
it is not in either case more or less to be desired ; 
nor are the evils which follow from evil actions less 
to be feared, because they follow necessarily : finally, 
whether we act under necessity or freedom, we are 
in either case led by hope and fear" (Elwes. vol. ii. 
pp. 365, 366). 

It is only just to state, in his own words, the convic- 
tion of Spinoza that a system of inevitable necessity 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 207 

is in his view reconcilable with all the characteristics 
of moral life, and that his own scheme is consistent 
through and through, — at least, he thinks so. In 
this relation one might refer to that chapter in 
the Analogy in which Bishop Butler discusses the 
theme. " On the opinion of necessity as influencing 
practice," in which he comes to various conclusions ; 
among others to this, that to say anything is by 
necessity does not exclude choice and design, which 
are matters of experience. So Spinoza argues that 
whether " we act under necessity or freedom we are 
in either case led by hope and fear." But the question 
cannot be argued here. 

Only, it is fair to state Spinoza's view, that his 
whole scheme of Reality has good and worthy results 
as it is applied to the life of man ; and his persuasion 
that all real human experience finds a fitting place in 
his system. Whether logically the scheme of Reality, 
outlined in the first part of the Ethics, can be recon- 
ciled with the teaching of the other parts is another 
question. Meanwhile let us look at his doctrine of the 
human mind. 

He begins with definitions of body, essence, idea, 
adequate idea, duration, and he explicitly identifies 
perfection and reality. His axioms are, that the 
essence of man does not involve necessary existence ; 
that man thinks; that modes of thinking, such as 
love, desire, do not take place unless there be in the 
individual an idea of the thing desired, but the idea 
can exist without the presence of any other mode 
of thinking. One of the most important of these 
definitions is that of an adequate idea. " By an 
adequate idea I mean an idea which, in so far as it 



208 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

is considered in itself without relation to the object, 
has all the intrinsic properties of a true idea. I say 
intrinsic in order to exclude that which is extrinsic, 
namely, the agreement between the idea and its 
object " (Elwes, p. 82). The definition is forced on 
Spinoza by his doctrine of the attributes. The attri- 
butes of Thought and Extension, to take these attributes 
of God which man can know, are quite different from 
each other. You cannot pass from one to the other. 
All things in Extension are to be explained from 
the attribute of Extension, and thought thinks from 
thought. How can we relate the one to the other ? 
In truth, there is no agreement nor disagreement ; 
each goes along by itself, and for the agreement of 
an idea with its object we must substitute the notion 
of an adequate idea. The truth of an idea belongs 
to it internally, and it is not made true by an agree- 
ment with its object. Further, an idea is the result 
of an activity of the mind. It is the mental concep- 
tion which is formed by the mind as a thinking 
thing. Here he formally distinguishes between per- 
ception and conception. In perception the mind seems 
to be passive with respect to its object, in conception it 
is active. 

We have here the problem of the relation between 
thought and its content, of thought and fact, of the 
idea to reality; or, in other aspects of the problem, 
the relation of mind and body, of the psychical to the 
physical. How numerous and varied the solutions 
have been, we need not say. The discussion proceeds 
to-day as actively as ever, and it goes on in relation 
to the claims of mechanism to dominate, and to make 
the psychical a mere accompaniment of physical 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 209 

changes. Spinoza, in view of the facts as viewed 
by him, sets forth the doctrine of an adequate idea. 
He thinks that this doctrine makes the solution inde- 
pendent of the relation which might obtain between 
an idea and its object. In so doing he merely adds 
to the complexity of the problem, and adds the diffi- 
culty which cost Kant so many years of anxious in- 
vestigation. It were a possible solution of the problem 
to regard the relation between object and idea as one 
of cause and effect. To hold that the mind is a tabula 
rosa on which the external order inscribes its method 
and procedure until absolute uniformities of experi- 
ence have generated absolute uniformities of thought 
might be a possible solution, as we see from the story 
of English philosophy from Locke to Herbert Spencer. 
Or we might avoid the problem by saying that each 
order goes along by itself, and their agreement is only 
a coincidence brought about by an external power. 
Or we might call them the convex and concave aspects 
of the same series ; or call in the aid of the double- 
aspect theory. In all of these there is the recognition 
of a problem to be solved, and but scanty success in 
the solution proposed. 

Does the doctrine of the adequate idea help us in 
any way ? It adds to the difficulty. For it brings in 
the independent activity of the mind, and brings no 
help to us in seeing how the independent activity of 
the mind can reach results which agree with the order 
of things. This is that aspect of the problem set forth 
by Kant in a letter to Marcus Herz, of date 9th Feb- 
ruary 1772. He writes to Herz to tell him of a projected 
treatise to consist of two parts : (1) Phenomenology, 
and (2) on Metaphysics. He explains what progress 
14 



210 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

he had made, and describes the emergence of a difficulty 
hitherto neglected by all metaphysicians, as it had 
been neglected by himself. " On what ground rests 
the relation of what we call a presentation to its 
object ? " If the presentation is an effect wrought by 
the object as a cause, then the determination of con- 
sciousness may present something — it may have an 
object. The passive or sensuous presentations have 
an intelligible relation to objects, and the principles 
which are taken from our minds have an intelligible 
worth for all things, so far as they are the objects of 
our senses. Having spoken of various possible solu- 
tions, Kant observes "that our understanding is through 
our presentations neither the cause of the object nor 
is the object the cause of the presentations of the 
understanding." He says that in the Dissertation he 
was content to characterise presentations in a merely 
negative way, and had said that sensuous things pre- 
sent things as they appear, intellectual presentations as 
they are. But how are things given to us if not in 
the way in which they affect us, and if such intellectual 
presentations rest on our inner activity whence comes 
the agreements with objects which are not produced 
by them ? And the principles (axiomata) of pure 
reason which are independent of experience, how and 
why do these agree with objects, and how are they valid ? 
Kant's perplexity is, at this time, that he can give no 
reasonable account of the agreement between reason and 
things (see the letter in Kant's Gesammelte Schriften, 
Band i. pp. 123-130). How can reason a priori form 
to itself notions of things with which things necessarily 
agree, and how can reason set forth principles with 
which experience shall agree ? In other words, what is 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 211 

the source of the agreement between reason and 
things ? is the problem set forth by Kant ; and the 
answer to which forms the scope of the critical 
philosophy. 

Is Spinoza aware of the problem ? Yes, and no. 
He is aware of it in so far as he finds that he must 
have a system of ideas which can be understood in 
themselves without reference to their agreement with 
their objects. He must conserve the independence of 
the attributes. Extension must be explained by exten- 
sion, and thought by thought. Nor does he bring 
these in relation to each other, though he admits that 
Extension is intelligible to thought, while thought can 
think itself, and also think Extension. But what is 
the explanation of the intelligibility of the universe ? 
The answer of Spinoza is the answer of all believers 
in the absolute, from Parmenides onwards, though he 
expresses it as bluntly as any one of them ever did. 
Proposition 7, Part II. : " Orde et connexio idearum idem 
est, ac ordo et connexio rerum." The proof is that 
everything that is caused depends on a knowledge of 
the cause of which it is the effect. Granted, but why 
should a knowledge of a cause in the attribute of 
Extension lead to a knowledge of an effect in the order 
of ideas ? or vice versa. He has just told us that each 
attribute is conceived through itself without any other ; 
why should the order and connection of ideas give the 
order and connection of things ? There is no answer 
save that " whatsoever can be perceived by the infinite 
intellect as constituting the essence of Substance belongs 
altogether only to one Substance ; consequently, Sub- 
stance thinking and Substance extended are one and 
the same Substance, comprehended now through 



212 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

one attribute, now through the other; so also, a 
mode of extension and the idea of that mode are one 
and the same thing, though expressed in two ways." 

Why should the thing be expressed in two ways ? 
A mode of extension is to be explained by reference to 
the attribute of extension, and so of an idea. There 
is no possibility of contact between the two attributes 
till we trace them back into the one Substance, and 
even there they remain in their distinctness. On the 
other hand, the necessities of his system compel Spinoza 
to postulate points of contact between modes of exten- 
sion and modes of thought everywhere, and the possi- 
bility of such is never established, and can never be, on 
the view of the mutual independence of the attributes. 

Leaving this problem, let us endeavour to follow him 
as he sketches the outline of a possible science of 
nature. It will be well to remember, in this con- 
nection, the warning of Clerk Maxwell : " The notion 
that space is the only form of ' material ' substance, 
and all existing things but affections of space, forms 
one of the ultimate foundations of the system of 
Spinoza. I shall not attempt to trace it down to 
more modern times, but I would advise those who 
study any system of metaphysics to examine carefully 
that part of it which deals with physical ideas" 
(Matter and Motion, p. 18). Keeping this advice in 
view, let us look at the series of physical propositions 
which set forth Spinoza's conception of physical science. 
Bodies are not distinguished from each other in respect 
of substance, but only in respect of motion or rest. 
The motion or rest of a body is determined by another 
body, and this again by another, and so on. The 
manner in which a body is determined depends partly 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 213 

on its own nature, partly on the nature of the body 
affecting it. " When any given bodies of the same or 
different magnitudes are compelled by other bodies to 
remain in contact, or if they be moved at the same or 
different rates of speed, so that their mutual move- 
ments should preserve among themselves a certain 
fixed relation, we say that such bodies are in union, 
and that together they compose one body or individual, 
which is distinguished from other bodies by this fact 
of union" (Elwes, p. 95). Thus an individual may 
remain the same, though new parts may be added, other 
parts taken off, or though the magnitude and motions 
of parts change. The oneness is in the combination. 
Many such individuals may form an individual of a 
higher order, and these again form a unity, till the 
whole of nature may be regarded as a single individual. 
The individual remains the same, though the parts 
vary in infinite ways. 

Properties of matter are thus limited to the qualities 
of motion and rest, for he expressly says that " bodies 
are individual things which are distinguished from 
each other in respect to motion and rest." He has no 
explanation of the possibility of motion in a matter 
which has only the attribute of extension, nor has he 
indicated how there can be that aggregation of space 
which he calls a body. In fact, the differences within 
the attribute of extension are inconsistent with the 
unity of the attribute, and vice versa ; and the notion 
of inertia which lies at the basis of his system of 
physics is added empirically, and without explanation, 
to his system. 

As every attribute expresses the whole of existence, 
every form under the one attribute must correspond 



214 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

with a form under the other attribute. There is a corre- 
spondence between grades of individuality in the attri- 
bute of extension and ideas in the attribute of thought. 
His postulate about the human body is, that it " is 
composed of a number of individual parts of diverse 
nature, each one of which is in itself extremely com- 
plex." To each of these there is a corresponding idea. 
Mind and body are one and the same mode of sub- 
stance, and that which under the attribute of exten- 
sion are modes of motion appear under the attribute 
of thought as forms of thought. The human body is 
affected by bodies external to it, and affects them, and 
the mind perceives the interaction; but he will not 
permit us to say that the mind influences the body or 
the body the mind. Body is influenced by body, and 
the action of the mind is limited to thinking. The 
belief that the mind can set the body in motion really 
means that we do not know how such motion has 
arisen. He will not explain mental phenomena by 
material, or the reverse. Each goes along by itself. 
But he uses the postulated parallelism of the two to 
throw light on many problems. " The idea of every 
mode in which the human body is affected by external 
bodies must involve the nature of the human body, 
and also the nature of the external body " (Prop. 16). 
In modern language, every sensation answers to a 
bodily condition, and, indeed, to the nature of both 
bodies. The affection will continue, until the human 
body is affected in such a way as to exclude the existence 
or the presence of the external body. By the associa- 
tion of ideas the mind is able to regard as present 
external bodies, though they be no longer in existence 
or present. The association of ideas corresponds to the 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 215 

law of motion in the sphere of extension. But laws of 
association are not laws of thought proper, for thought 
proper regards things sub specie ceternitatis. We may 
note here the explanation of memory. " It is simply 
a certain association of ideas involving the nature 
of things outside the human body, which association 
arises in the mind according to the order and asso- 
ciation of the affections of the human body " (Elwes, 
p. 100). 

Thus imagination and memory resemble each other. 
We can imagine a body to be present even though it 
is not acting on us, and we can recall a mental picture 
of an external object without its actual presence. The 
mind knows the body and its existence only through 
ideas of an affection of the body ; the knowledge of our 
own body is primary, and the idea of an external body 
is through an affection of our body, for the " order and 
connection of ideas is the same as the order and 
connection of causes." In imagination we picture 
states of our own bodies, and interpret them as results 
of the action of external bodies. Strictly, ideas of the 
modifications are those which involve the nature of 
the human body and of external bodies ; they do not 
answer to that concatenation of ideas which arise from 
the order of the intellect, whereby the mind perceives 
things in their primary causes, and which in all men is 
the same. The content of the imaginative experience 
arranges itself according to the disposition of the 
individual. This experience Spinoza calls " Cognitio 
primi generis, opinio, vel imaginatio." In the course of 
description of the notions which are common to all men 
he has occasion to mention those which belong only to 
the individual, and he gives a short account of them. 



216 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

Not to omit anything necessary to be known, he sets 
down causes whence are derived the terms called 
transcendental, such as ens, res, aliquid. These may 
be described as universals of imaginative experience. 
The human body, being limited, can only form a 
certain number of images ; if this number be exceeded 
the outline will become blurred, and the images become 
confused. The images being confused in the body, the 
mind confusedly imagines, and will comprehend them 
under one attribute, being, thing, and so on. Similarly 
arise general notions, such as man, horse, dog ; they 
arise from the fact that so many images, for instance, 
of men, are formed simultaneously in the human mind 
that the powers of imagination break down, not indeed 
entirely, but to the extent of losing count of small 
differences between individuals, and the mind invents a 
predicate to express something which an infinite number 
of individuals possess in common. He recapitulates 
what he said thus : " From all that has been said it is 
clear that we in many cases perceive and form our 
general notions : — 1. From particular things represented 
to our intellect fragmentarily, confusedly, and without 
order through our senses ; I have settled to call such 
perceptions, Cognitiones ab experientia vaga. 2. From 
symbols ; for example, from the fact of having read or 
heard certain words we remember things and form 
certain ideas concerning them similar to those through 
which we imagine things. I shall call both these ways 
of regarding things knowledge of the first kind, 
opinion, or imagination. 3. From the fact that we 
have notions common to all men, and adequate ideas of 
the properties of things ; this I call reason and know- 
ledge of the second kind. Besides these two kinds of 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 217 

knowledge there is a third kind of knowledge, which 
we will call intuition " (Elwes, p. 113). 

We have already seen what Spinoza means by 
imaginative experience. It has its value ; in fact, 
according to him, the knowledge of the great majority 
of men, the knowledge of everyday life, is of this kind. 
If we are aware that these experiences are imaginative, 
if we imagine things as vividly as if they were present, 
that may be an advantage ; the error arises when we 
think they are present because we imagine them 
vividly. We make mistakes also in the interpretations 
of our perceptions, as when we misjudge distance, and 
so on. As regards this sphere of imaginative experi- 
ence, Spinoza makes it very extensive, and its influence 
very great. From it men can only have a partial 
knowledge of themselves, their bodies, and of external 
bodies, and men mistake this vague and fragmentary 
knowledge for knowledge in its completeness. It is this 
mainly that prevents men from obtaining a knowledge 
of the eternal and necessary order of things ; each man 
shuts himself up in that partial knowledge which 
comes from imagination, and the partial swallows up 
the opportunity of the whole. It is needless to dwell 
on it, though Spinoza does so at great length. In 
some respects it is a fruitful and instructive discussion, 
but when Spinoza sets down all the applications of our 
moral ideals to the universal substance as instances of 
the undue use of the imagination we may without dis- 
cussion demur. 

Briefly, he calls knowledge of the first kind the only 
source of falsity, while knowledge of the second and 
third kinds is necessarily true, and enables us to dis- 
tinguish the true from the false. To have a true idea 



2i8 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

is to know that we have a true idea, and to doubt the 
truth of it is impossible. Can we attain to true and 
adequate ideas ? Yes, for there is a concatenation of 
ideas which exists according to the order of the 
intellect, by which the mind perceives things through 
first causes : and which is the same in all men. 
If we can discover among the ideae of the bodily 
affections some which are adequate, these will form 
the basis of true and valid scientific inference. One 
criterion is that they must be " the same for all men." 
They must therefore be the outcome of the mind 
itself, and the product of its activity. Here we are 
brought back to the fundamental principle of the 
philosophy, the reference to the intelligence of God so 
far as He constituted the minds of an infinite number 
of finite things. If we grasp this thought, truly we 
shall find that the perception of a part of the universal 
property will give us an adequate idea of it, for the 
part is part of the whole. For modes, whether of 
extension or of thought, must present in all their parts 
and as wholes certain identical and uniform properties. 
Corporeal nature is one, and being one it has certain 
properties, and these properties give us the axioms 
of mathematics and physics. These common notions 
which all men share are the starting-point of objective 
and universal knowledge ; scientific knowledge are these 
communes notiones which express the common pro- 
perties of things, and in his own words they are, " Res, 
quas clare et distincte intelligimus, vel rerum communes 
proprietates sunt, vel quae ix iis deducunter." 

Axioms and deductions from them, adequate ideas of 
notions common to all men and reasoned inferences 
from them, is science according to Spinoza. And the 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 219 

Ethics is just the exhibition of such knowledge. The 
demonstrations from the Notiones communes are just 
as good as the notions themselves, for "Mentis enim 
oculi, quibus res videt observatque, sunt ipsse demonstra- 
tiones." But reason regards things sub specie cetemitatis, 
and such regard has reference not to contingent things 
but to necessary ; that is to say, it has regard not to 
any particular thing in its particularity, but to those 
necessary properties which all things have in common, 
and to the common notions which all men have of 
them. We pass from the imaginative view of the 
world, which has regard to the world of things in 
their variety, colour, and changeableness, and we have 
to look at the world as a system of necessary laws, 
to which time has no reference. Thus for Spinoza 
scientific thought leaves on one side all the manifold- 
ness of the world, gives no explanation of the " thing- 
hood " of things, nor of how these unite in the order of 
the whole. Individuality, which has significance for 
him when he comes to speak of the Conatus sese con- 
servandi, has no meaning for scientific thought in its 
contemplation of the eternal order. Science abstracts 
from local and temporal conditions, and while it may 
deal with something real it is still abstract, and can 
give no adequate account of concrete experience. 

" It is in the nature of reason to perceive things sub 
quddam cetemitatis specie." So in the second corollary 
of Proposition 44. The proof is worth quoting. " It is 
in the nature of things to regard things not as contin- 
gent, but as necessary. Reason perceives this necessity 
of things truly, that is, as it is in itself. But this 
necessity of things is the very necessity of the eternal 
nature of God ; therefore it is in the nature of reason to 



220 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

regard things under this form of eternity. We may 
add, that the bases of reason are the notions which 
answer to things common to all, and which do not 
answer to the essence of any particular thing ; which 
must therefore be conceived without any relation to 
time, under a certain form of eternity " (Elwes, p. 117). 
Thus we are led to the conclusions that every idea 
of every body, or of every thing actually existing, 
necessarily involves the eternal and infinite essence of 
God, and that the knowledge of the eternal and 
infinite essence of God, which every idea involves, is 
adequate and perfect, and so the human mind has an 
adequate knowledge of the eternal and infinite essence 
of God. He has not explained how the particularity 
of particular things which is neglected in the common 
notions is still valid as involving the eternal and 
necessary existence of God. These are only side by 
side. The particularity which is without significance 
for common notions must be brought back somehow, 
and it reappears, as it had disappeared, because Spinoza 
cannot do without it. 

But perhaps the explanation is to be found in the third 
kind of knowledge of which he spoke in the Scholium 
to Proposition 40. In the Scholium to Proposition 47 
he says : " Hence we see that the infinite essence 
and the eternity of God are known to all. Now, 
as all things are in God, and are conceived through 
God, we can from this knowledge infer many things 
which we may adequately know, and we may form 
that third kind of knowledge of which we spoke " 
(Elwes, p. 118). In Part V. Proposition 36, Scholium, he 
says : " Since the essence of our minds consists solely 
in knowledge, whereof the beginning and the founda- 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 221 

tion is God, it becomes clear to us in what way our 
mind, as to its essence and existence, follows from 
the divine nature and constantly depends on God. 
I have thought it worth while here to call attention 
to this in order to show by this example how the 
knowledge of particular things, which I have called 
intuitive or of the third kind, is potent and more 
powerful than the universal knowledge which I 
have styled knowledge of the second kind." Into 
this we shall not enter further, for this kind of 
knowledge is possible only to a mind which is at 
the centre, and to which the whole of reality is open. 
This part of the Ethics ends with a discussion of free 
will, and a demonstration that will and understand- 
ing are one and the same. " In the mind there is no 
absolute or free will, but the mind is determined to 
wish this or that by cause, which has been determined 
by another cause, and so on to infinity " (Prop. 48). There 
is in the mind no volition or affirmation or negation 
save that which an idea, inasmuch as it is an idea, 
involves; these are the propositions which end the 
second part, and to Spinoza they are so important 
that he devotes a few pages to the establishment of 
them, and to criticisms of their opposites. 

Will and understanding are nothing beyond the 
individual volitions and ideas ; so Spinoza, anticipating 
Hume, says ; and a particular idea and a particular 
volition are one and the same, therefore will and 
understanding are one and the same. The will and 
the understanding are for Spinoza mere abstract 
terms, and have reality only in particular ideas and 
volitions. It may be frankly admitted that the dis- 
tinction between will and understanding has often 



222 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

been made too absolute, and that the faculty doctrine 
has been sometimes so emphatically expressed that 
men have lost sight of the unity of mental life. It 
is well to be reminded that there is something in 
common in understanding and will, if nothing more 
than that they are activities of the same subject. 
But they are different forms of activity, and must 
be distinguished so far as they are different. Spinoza 
disregards the unity of the mental life, and for him 
unity is not to be sought or found in man, but in 
God. From that point of view it is possible to dis- 
regard the testimony of consciousness, and to refuse 
to regard the synthetic unity of apperception as 
a necessary source of explanation of our mental 
life and of the unity of our experience. We do 
obtain a certain kind of unity, but it has the dis- 
advantage of being out of relation to our experience. 
For every explanation of experience postulates in 
some sense a unitary centre to which all our experi- 
ence is referred. No doubt it has been said that 
volition is only the self-realisation of an idea, but 
that is to substitute the idea for the self as the source 
of the explanation of the unity of our mental life. 
It is a hard question to answer, how far Spinoza 
recognises a unity of our mental life, or a subject as 
the bearer of an experience. How far he could 
recognise ideals as a source of action can hardly be 
decided, for in one sense he admits them and in 
another sense he denies them. At all events, the 
identification of will and understanding cannot be 
maintained, for they are different, and represent 
various functions within the unity of our mental life. 
We shall come across another definition of the will 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 223 

when we follow Spinoza into the third part of the 
Eth ics, which cannot easily be explained as consistent 
with the proposition that intellect and will are one 
and the same. " Hie conatus, cum ad mentem solam, 
refertur, voluntas apellatur, sed cum ad mentem et 
corpus simul refertur, vocatur appetitus ; qui proinde 
nihil aliud est quam ipsa hominis essentia, ex cujus 
natura ea, quae ipsius conservationi inserviunt, 
necessario sequuntur; atque adeo homo ad eadem 
agendum determinatus est. Deinde inter appetitum 
et cupiditatem nulla est differentia, nisi quod cupiditas 
ad homines plerumque referatur, quatenus sui appe- 
titus sunt conscii, et propterea sic definiri potest, 
nempe cupiditas est appetitus cum ejusdem con- 
scientia. Constat itaque ex his omnibus, nihil nos 
conari, velle, appetere, neque cupere, quia ad bonum 
esse judicamus; sed contra, nos propterea aliquid 
bonum esse judicare, quia id conamur, volumus, appet- 
imus, atque cupimus " (Part III. Prop. 9, Scholium). 
Thus ideas are dependent on impulse and will ; will is 
no longer identical with the understanding, for will is 
the conscious impulse towards self-preservation. 



CHAPTER XII 



The Last Three Books of the Ethics — The Conatus sese conservandi 
— Its Meaning and its Consequences — Pleasure and Pain — 
The Primary Emotions and their Derivatives — Description 
and Appreciation — Ethical Judgments illusive — Good — 
Utility — Timeless Causation — The Vanishing of Emotion- 
Social Ethics — The State — The third Kind of Knowledge — 
The Intellectual Love of God — Immortality — Place, Blessed- 



The three last books of the Ethics are of great import- 
ance in their place in the system of Spinoza, and also 
in themselves, for they contain some of the most 
fruitful and most valuable work he has done. The 
third book deals with the origin and nature of the 
emotions (affectum), the fourth book with the bondage 
of man, and the fifth with the freedom of man. Our 
waning space compels us to condense, and our account 
of these books must be extremely brief. 

The psychology of the feelings may be studied apart 
from the implications of his system, and in a measure 
ought to be so. For the account of the rise and 
growth of the emotions is an independent study, and, 
while he finds it necessary to make reference now 
and then to the one substance, these are more formal 
than real. He begins by stating that he is to approach 
the study of the emotions in a purely scientific spirit, 

224 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 225 

that he is to study them with an impartiality as 
great as that with which he studies geometrical 
forms. He is not to praise or blame, not to despise 
or mourn over them ; he seeks to understand them. 
He does not regard them as of the same kind, or on 
the same level as geometrical forms ; he means only 
that they are caused, are intelligible, and may be 
understood ; but the causes in operation are not iden- 
tical with the causes which explain figures in 
geometry. 

The quotation at the close of the foregoing chapter 
seems to indicate that we have to change our view 
when we pass from the first two books of the Ethics 
to the last three. The first two books culminated 
in the identification of understanding and will. 
Will is the affirmation or negation of the idea, and 
ideas represent the activity of the mind. When he 
comes to the study of the emotional nature of man 
he finds some phenomena which are not consistent 
with the view that it is ideas which determine the 
phenomena of mental life. Why are we active ? Is 
it from a desire for good ? In the foregoing quotation 
we are told : " We do not strive for, wish, seek, nor 
desire anything because we judge it to be good ; we 
judge it to be good because we strive for, wish, seek, 
or desire it." Ideas flow from the striving, and are 
the effect of them; in other words, voluntas is the 
prior, and intellectus flows from it, and that relation 
cannot be a relation of identity. 

• The Conatus sese. conservandi is the expression of 
the nature of every individual thing. This conatus 
is the form which the infinite divine activity in all 
existence takes when it is embodied in any individual, 
i5 



226 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

and it takes on the form which is the nature of 
each individual thing. It is one thing as expressed 
in the law of inertia, it is another thing in more 
complex natures, but everywhere existence is self- 
conservation. Appetitus attended with consciousness 
is desire, and although this is somewhat doubtful it 
is possible that Spinoza does make consciousness to 
be an element in the effort towards self-conservation. 
Desire from the mental side is will ; when referred to 
mind and body in conjunction it is called appetitus. 

Of great significance is the view of pleasure and 
pain, and of the part they play in life. " We see 
that the mind can undergo many changes, and can 
pass now to a greater and now to a less state of 
perfection, which passive states (passiones) explain 
to us the emotions of pleasure and pain. By pleasure 
therefore, here and in the following propositions, I 
shall understand the passion by which the mind 
passes to a great perfection, and by pain (tristitiam) 
that by which it passes to a less perfection" (Prop. 11, 
Scholium). Pleasure, pain, and desire are the three 
primary emotions; beyond these three he recognises 
no primary emotions, and from these he undertakes 
to show how all other emotions are derived. Let it 
be noted that the feelings of pleasure and pain arise 
from the transition from one state to another, and 
feeling is supposed to answer to a change of condition. 

Pleasure accompanies furtherance of life, and pain 
is the sign that life is hindered. It would be of 
interest, had we time, to trace the steps by which 
Spinoza traces the evolution of specific kinds of feel- 
ing from the primary emotions of pleasure, pain, and 
desire. The principle of association is elucidated, 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 227 

drawn upon, and the chemistry of the growth of 
feeling is set forth so as to be a permanent gain 
to psychology. Love and hatred are explained by 
the fact that we love what gives us pleasure, we 
hate what gives us pain. The evolution of the 
emotions of hope, fear, and confidence, of emulation, 
gratitude, benevolence, anger, revenge, cruelty, timidity, 
daring, cowardice is .explained, and their evolution 
out of the primary desires and emotions is described 
in a most suggestive and instructive manner. Here 
Spinoza is on the level of ordinary human experience, 
and has helped us greatly to understand the evolution 
of our mental life. The point where difficulty may 
be felt is how we are to connect what he calls the 
primary emotions with the fundamental proposition 
of his psychology, namely, the Conatus sese con- 
servandi, with the primary emotions. Take the 
primary emotions and the law of association, and 
we can understand the conditions of the growth of 
feeling ; but whether these primary emotions can be 
understood from the simple principle of self-conserva- 
tion is another question, which is too large for dis- 
cussion here. 

Something might be said of the account of the moral 
emotions given by Spinoza, which we think to be 
inadequate. " Repentance is pain accompanied by 
the idea of some action, which we believe we have 
performed by the free decision of our mind " (Elwes, 
p. 179). In the explanation attached to the proposi- 
tion he says : " This is perhaps the place to call 
attention to the fact that it is nothing wonderful 
that all these actions which are commonly called 
wrong are followed by pain, and all those which are 



228 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

called right are followed by pleasure. We can easily 
gather from what has been said that this depends 
in great measure on education. Parents, by repro- 
bating the former class of actions, and by frequently 
chiding their children because of them, and also by per- 
suading to and praising the latter class, have brought 
it about, that the former should be associated with 
pain and the latter with pleasure" (Elwes, p. 179). 
It is not a sufficient explanation of repentance, or 
of right and wrong. He points out certain elements 
in the complex experience indicated by these terms, 
but the course of ethical thought up to the present 
time proves that he has not taken account of all the 
elements of moral experience. 

For one thing, Spinoza could not do full justice to 
the ethical experience of man, because he had denied 
the category of time, and did not allow to time any 
positive content or value. He expressly denies to our 
appreciation any objective value. If all human ac- 
tivity of thought can be exhausted in the two functions 
of description and appreciation, as it is the tendency 
of modern thought to affirm, then by Spinoza the work 
of description is the work of reason, and the work of 
appreciation is the work of imagination. Apprecia- 
tion arises in a world in which freedom has a real 
meaning, in which change, opposition, genesis, growth 
are real, and in which judgments of worth are of value. 
The process of evolution must be a real process, and 
the judgment as to the worth of the process must be 
of some value. But ethical distinctions and ethical 
judgments are of no significance within the Natura 
naturans; if they are to have significance, they can 
obtain a footing only within the Natxira naturata. 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 229 

Even within the Natura naturata appreciations have 
only a relative value. We have to bear this in mind 
as we proceed to read the ethical definitions and de- 
scriptions set forth in the fourth part of the Ethics. 
" By good I mean that which we certainly know to be 
useful to us. By evil I mean that which we certainly 
know to be a hindrance to us in the attainment of any 
good ; particular things I call contingent in so far as, 
while regarding their essence only, we find nothing 
therein which necessarily asserts their existence or 
excludes it. Particular things I call possible in so far 
as, while regarding the causes whereby they must be 
produced, we know not whether such causes be deter- 
mined for producing them. By an end, for the sake 
of which we do something, I mean a desire. By virtue 
and power I mean the same thing, that is, virtue, in so 
far as it is referred to man, is a man's nature or essence, 
in so far as it has the power of effecting what can 
only be understood by the laws of that nature " 
(Elwes, pp. 190, 191). 

The notion of good is defined in relation to utilita-s, 
and evil is only a hindrance to the attainment of good. 
There is such a thing as End, but the end for which 
we do something is desire. Thus we are allowed in a 
sense to move within the world of time " change " and 
to foresee ends and act on them, and to attach a mean- 
ing to ethical terms ; and sometimes we are permitted 
to lose sight of the scheme of causation, and to regard 
other kinds of causes than the formal cause. We 
come within measurable distance of being allowed to 
think of man as self -determining, not as merely deter- 
mined. The Conatus se conservandi attains to some 
fulness of ethical meaning, and may be understood as 



230 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

the attempt to free ourselves from the dominance of 
the feelings and passions excited within us by some- 
thing merely external to us. 

But ever and anon Spinoza places us in the timeless 
scheme of causation, and we are constrained to regard 
the evolution of our emotions, ideas, and conduct as 
without significance in the intelligible scheme of things. 
When we look at men or things from the point of view 
of the Conatus sese conservandi, and note the influence 
attributed to it in the growth of mental life, we feel 
that we are in a real world and that we are really in- 
terpreting human experience ; but suddenly the scene 
changes, and we are reminded that this has no real 
value : it is the work of imagination. Then as we read 
we are in the midst of a series of kaleidoscopic changes, 
and have a series of identifications which are bewilder- 
ing. We read on about the Conatus sese conservandi, 
and we find that " Virtus est ipsa humana potentia, quae 
sola hominis essentia definitur, hoc est, quae solo conatu, 
quo homo in suo esse persevarere conatur, definitur" 
(Prop. 20, Part IV., Demonstration). And in the corollary 
to Prop. 22 we are assured that " Conatus sese conser- 
vandi primum et unicum virtutis est fundamentum." We 
have thus only to trace the consequences of the principle 
of self -conservation in order to arrive at virtue. But we 
have to make this consistent with Spinoza's contention, 
that the real nature of men consists in pure know- 
ledge. As far as man is concerned, it must lead to the 
conclusion that self-preservation in man leads to the 
development of knowledge. " Rationis essentia nihil 
aliud est quam mens nostra, quatenus clare et distincte 
intelligit: ergo quicquid ex ratione conamur, nihil 
aliud est quam intelligere. Deincle quoniam hie mentis 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 231 

conatus, quatenus ratiocinatur, suum esse conatur con- 
servare, nihil aliud est quam intelligere ; est ergo hie 
intelligent conatus primum et unicum virtutis funda- 
mentum, nee alicujus finis causa res intelligere conab- 
imur ; sed contra mens, quatenus ratiocinatur, nihil sibi 
bonum esse concipere poterit nisi id, quod ad intelli- 
gendum conducit " (Prop. 26). Thus we have two foun- 
dations of virtue, each of which has the distinction 
of being Primum et unicum. The Conatus sese con- 
servandi in the case of man becomes the Conatus 
intelligendi, and man becomes a pure intelligence. 
Feeling, emotion, tends to disappear, and the essence 
of man is that he exists in order to understand. This 
is put alongside of the account of the emotions, which 
have been treated in the most realistic way, as some- 
thing positive, and as real powers of human nature. 

He had told us that emotion can only be destroyed 
or controlled by another emotion ; in other words, that 
pure understanding is powerless to act as a motive, 
and he had further told us that there are emotions 
applicable to the mind as active ; and here, in describ- 
ing the second foundation of virtue, he brings us back 
to pure intellectualism. We quote from the Scholium 
from Proposition 59, Part III. : "All actions following from 
emotion, which are attributable to the mind in virtue 
of its understanding, I set down to strength of char- 
acter, which I divide into courage and highmindedness. 
By courage, I mean the desire whereby every man strives 
to preserve his own being in accordance solely with 
the dictates of reason ; by highmindedness I mean the 
desire whereby every man endeavours, solely under 
the dictates of reason, to aid other men, and to unite 
them to himself in friendship " (Elwes, pp. 171, 172). 



232 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

It is noticeable that the language of Spinoza is 
teleological while he is dealing with the emotions, and 
striving to explain their genesis and growth from the 
primary emotions of pleasure, pain, and desire. As 
soon as he makes the essence of man to be pure intel- 
ligence he loses sight of teleology and he becomes 
abstract, and his system loses touch with experience. 

The foregoing quotation contains the mode of transi- 
tion by which Spinoza passes from individual to social 
ethics. He makes the transition without notice and 
without argument. He makes no endeavour to recon- 
cile egoism and altruism ; indeed, it did not appear to 
him as a problem to be discussed. He simply says, as 
a matter of description or definition : " Eas itaque 
actiones, quae solum agentis utile intendunt, ad animos- 
itatem, et qua? alterius etiam utile intendunt, acl gene- 
rositatem refero" (Part III., Prop. 59, Scholium). It 
may be a good definition, but some account might have 
been given of how the Conatus conservandi can be 
transformed into a care for the welfare of others. 
Apart from the failure to recognise that there is a 
problem to be solved, the social side of his Ethics is 
worthy of the highest admiration. Good is that which 
is in harmony with our nature, and from its very 
nature it must be a common good. Men are active in 
so far as they act in obedience to reason, and by the 
laws of their nature they desire what they call good 
and seek to remove what they consider bad ; and so far 
as men live in harmony with reason they necessarily do 
such things as are good for human nature, and therefore 
good for each individual man. The good which each 
follower of virtue seeks for himself he will desire for 
others. " Deinde cupiclitas, quatenus ad mentem refer- 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 233 

tur, est ipsa mentis essentia : mentis autem essentia in 
cognitione consistit, quae involvit Dei cognitionem, et 
sine qua nee esse nee concipi potest : adeoque quo mentis 
essentia majorem Dei cognitionem involvit, eo cupiditas, 
qua is, qui virtutem sectatur, bonum, quod sibi appetit, 
alteri cupit, etiam major erit " (Prop. 37, Part IV.). We 
quote this, not only for the meaning, but also because it 
contains one of these rapid identifications with which 
Spinoza bewilders his readers. The essence of the mind 
is desire, and the essence of the mind is knowledge. In 
fact, the mind has too many essences in these pages. 

Apart from that, one recognises the truth and great- 
ness of Spinoza's ethical teaching in many passages of 
his works. He teaches that the good is a common 
good, and what a man desires for himself and loves he 
will love more constantly if he sees that others love it 
also ; he will endeavour that others love it also, and as 
all can rejoice in the common good he will strive that 
they all rejoice in it. " To man there is nothing more 
useful than man : nothing, I say, could men choose for 
the conservation of their own being more than that they 
should all agree in all respects; that the minds and 
bodies of all should form, as it were, one mind and one 
body, and all at the same time, as far as they could, 
attempt to preserve their own being, and all at the 
same time should seek for themselves the common 
utility of all ; from which it follows that men who 
are governed by reason, that is, men who under the 
guidance of reason seek their own advantage, desire 
for themselves nothing which they do not also desire 
for the rest of mankind, and so are just, faithful, and 
honourable" (Part IV., Prop. 18, Scholium). After a 
description of the man who has made himself master of 



234 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

himself, or of the man who is ruled by reason alone, in 
which he tells us that a free man thinks of nothing 
less than of death, that his meditation is not of death, 
he passes on to a vivid description of the man who 
has won his freedom. On this we do not dwell, we 
say only, that it is a fascinating picture which he draws, 
and one well worthy of our study. 

At this stage he passes on to the study of the State, 
and his ethical study is united to his political philo- 
sophy. The theory of the State is merely mentioned 
in the Ethics ; it is developed at length in his other 
works. But we must leave his political and theological 
works untouched, as they demand a work devoted to 
them alone. We shall give only one quotation, and 
pass to the last chapter of the Ethics. " Every man 
exists by sovereign natural right, and consequently, by 
sovereign natural right, performs those actions which 
follow from the necessity of his own nature ; there- 
fore, by sovereign natural right every man judges 
what is good and what is bad, takes care of his own 
advantage according to his own disposition, avenges 
the wrongs done to him, and endeavours to preserve 
what he loves and to destroy what he hates. Now, if 
man lived under the guidance of reason, every one 
would remain in possession of this his right, without 
any injury being done to his neighbour. But, seeing 
that they are a prey to their emotions, which far 
surpass human power or virtue, they are drawn in 
different directions, and, being at variance one with 
another, stand in need of mutual help. Wherefore, in 
order that men may live together in harmony and 
may aid one another, it is necessary that they should 
forego their natural right and, for the sake of security, 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 235 

refrain from all actions which can injure their fellow- 
men" (Elwes, p. 214). He lays down the nature and 
power of the State, and the ideas on which it is 
founded, and makes the following ethical deduction 
from what he has said : " From all these considerations 
it is evident that justice and injustice, sin and merit, 
are extrinsic ideas, and not attributes which display 
the nature of the mind " (Elwes, p. 215). 

Passing to the fifth part of the Ethics, we note that 
the view of knowledge, which was rather held in 
abeyance in the third and fourth parts, appears in all 
its grandeur. The emotions have been subdued, are 
held in hand at least, and feeling is attenuated almost 
to nothingness. We have ascended to the whole, have 
recognised that we are in the whole, and have our 
place and function in it. It is possible for man to 
form clear and distinct conceptions, and properties 
which are common to all things can be conceived 
adequately. It follows that we may form a clear and 
distinct conception of every emotion, and to under- 
stand our emotions is to have the power of controlling 
them. The more the knowledge that things are neces- 
sary is applied to particular things, the greater is the 
power of the mind over the emotions. The emotions 
are brought under control in proportion as we under- 
stand them, and we understand them in so far as we 
are enabled to think them in relation to their causes, 
and to bring them under the conception of universal 
necessity. Universal necessity lifts us out of our 
isolation, and enables us to see ourselves as included in 
the universal Being, and one with God. The mind 
can bring it about that all bodily modifications or 
images of things may be referred to the idea of God. 



236 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

The next step is swiftly taken, and leads us into one 
of the most interesting and characteristic positions of 
the philosophy of Spinoza. It unites knowledge with 
love. " He who clearly and distinctly understands him- 
self and his emotions loves God, and so much the more 
as he the more understands himself and his emotions " 
(Prop. 15, Part V.). 

At one step we pass the boundary between emotion 
and knowledge, and in a phrase, " Amor intellectuals 
Dei," we unite the two. We look back to Spinoza's 
definition of love, and we find it to be, Love is pleasure, 
accompanied with the idea of an external cause, and 
we can find no way of transition from the emotion to 
the intellect. We find pleasure in the exercise of our 
highest activity, which is the exercise of thought, and 
we find pleasure at the thought of that Being who is 
the source of the joy with which knowledge fills us. 
But Spinoza has not explained how the union has 
taken place. For love has the idea of an external 
cause accompanying it, and yet in the highest reach 
of thought, according to Spinoza, externality has dis- 
appeared, and we are one with God. In truth, Spinoza 
has need of the beautiful conception of the intellectual 
love of God, and he makes the synthesis without ex- 
plaining it. From it he draws significant consequences. 
One is that our love to God is a part of the infinite 
love with which God loves Himself. God's love to 
man and man's love to God are one and the same. 
We see ourselves and all things sub specie cetemitatis. 
This intellectual love, human and divine, is exalted, till 
all becoming and opposition are lost sight of, and we 
are landed in a mysticism in which all intelligible 
relations have vanished. It is a beautiful thought this 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 237 

of intellectual love ; but love is an emotion, and emotion 
is feeling, and, according to Spinoza's psychology, 
feeling arises only when a transition takes place. 
How, then, can there be, on his own showing, a 
feeling in relation to a timeless, changeless state of 
things ? 

He develops his doctrine of knowledge still further, 
and in close relation with this evolution is his doctrine 
of immortality. It is a kind of conditional immortality, 
and it depends on the growth of the individual in 
knowledge. " Our mind, in so far as it knows itself 
under the form of eternity, has to that extent a know- 
ledge of God, and knows that it is in God, and is 
conceived through God" (Elwes, p. 262). The third 
kind of knowledge, namely, intuitive knowledge, de- 
pends on the mind so far as the mind is eternal. We 
delight in this kind of knowledge, and our delight is 
accompanied by the idea of God as cause. It is from 
this third kind of knowledge that the intellectual love 
of God necessarily arises, and this intellectual love of God 
is eternal. " The power of the mind is defined by know- 
ledge only, and its infirmity or passion is defined by the 
privation of knowledge only ; it therefore follows that 
the mind is most passive whose greatest part is made 
up of inadequate ideas, so that it may be characterised 
more readily by its passive states than by its activities. 
On the other hand, that mind is most active whose 
greatest part is made up of adequate ideas, so that, 
although it may contain as many inadequate ideas as 
the former mind, it may yet be more easily charac- 
terised by ideas attributable to human virtue than by 
ideas which tell of human infirmity " (Elwes, p. 258). 
The greater the number of adequate ideas, and the 



238 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

fewer the number of inadequate ideas there is in 
any mind, the greater is the power of the mind to 
view itself sub specie ceternitatis. Is there, then, im- 
mortality ? Yes ; for " the human mind cannot be 
absolutely destroyed with the body, but there remains 
something of it which is eternal " (Prop. 23, Part V.). 
We cannot, he says, assign to the mind duration except 
while the body endures. " Yet, as there is something 
notwithstanding which is conceived by a certain eternal 
necessity through the very essence of God, this some- 
thing, which appertains to the essence of the mind, 
will necessarily be eternal " (Elwes, p. 259). 

We may quote the Scholium to Proposition 23 : " This 
idea, which expresses the essence of the body under the 
form of eternity, is, as we have said, a certain mode 
of thinking which belongs to the essence of the mind, 
and is necessarily eternal. Yet it is not possible that 
we should remember that we existed before our body, 
for our body can bear no trace of such existence, 
neither can eternity be defined in terms of time or 
have any relation to time. But, notwithstanding, we 
feel and know that we are eternal. For the mind 
feels those things that it can conceive by understand- 
ing, no less than those things that it remembers. For 
the eyes of the mind, whereby it sees and observes 
things, are none other than proofs. Thus, although 
we do not remember that we existed before the body, 
yet we feel that our mind, in so far as it involves the 
essence of the body under the form of eternity, is 
eternal, and that thus its existence cannot be defined 
in terms of time, or explained through duration " 
(Elwes, p. 260). 

Thus the immortality advocated here is out of rela- 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 239 

tion to time. That part of the mind which endures is 
more perfect than the rest. He expressly says that 
"the eternal part of the mind is the understanding, 
and the perishable part is the imagination " (Prop. 40, 
Cor.). In other words, the mind endures so far as it 
is active, and perishes so far as it is passive. This 
brings us back again to the intellectual view that only 
those attain to immortality who rise to the third kind 
of knowledge. Those who become organs of the divine 
activity of thought endure, and cannot cease to be. 
He has hinted that eternal persistence may mean exist- 
ence before the body, and may exist after it ; but he 
has not explained how growth in knowledge, and the 
attainment of the third kind of knowledge, which is a 
process taking place in time and which is a condition 
of possible immortality, is connected with eternal per- 
sistence. 

As if conscious that his peculiar doctrine of immor- 
tality could not afford a foundation for conduct for 
ordinary people, he states that, "even if we did not 
know that our mind is eternal, we should still consider 
as of primary importance piety and religion, and 
generally of all things which, in Part IV., we showed 
to be attributable to courage and high-mindedness " 
(Prop. 41). In the proof he says : " The first and only 
foundation of virtue, or the rule of right living, is 
seeking one's own interest. Now, in order to deter- 
mine what reason describes as useful, we took no 
account of the mind's eternity. Although we were 
ignorant at that time that the mind is eternal, we 
nevertheless stated that the qualities attributable to 
courage and high-mindedness are of primary import- 
ance. Therefore, if we were still io-norant of this 



240 DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND 

doctrine, we should yet put the aforesaid precepts of 
reason in the first place." It is well, for the eternity 
of the mind turns out to be an eternity of only a part 
of the mind, and it is an eternity only for that mind 
which attains to the third kind of knowledge. 

Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, it is virtue 
itself ; neither do we rejoice therein because we control 
our lusts : but, contrariwise, because we rejoice therein 
we are able to control our lusts. Such is the final 
proposition of this memorable book. The proof of the 
proposition is a final attempt to unite love and know- 
ledge. For blessedness consists in love towards God, 
which springs from the third kind of knowledge. But 
the more the mind rejoices in this love, so does it the 
more understand. Thus the love increases the power 
to understand, and the increase of the power to under- 
stand adds to the power of loving. The mere intel- 
lectualism of his system is thus redeemed by the 
practical power of love, and feeling has found a place 
in the final outcome. It is a question whether on his 
system, and in consistency with the function he ascribes 
to mere thinking, he has any right to bring in love 
in the final outcome. But if we do not see how he 
can legitimately bring it in, we are glad to find it 
there, for it redeems the system from barrenness, and 
gives a glow of sunset colour to the final book of the 
Ethics. 

Spinoza lays stress on the strenuous mood. Peace, 
blessedness, virtue are to be won, and it is not easy to 
win them. The concluding paragraph is touching and 
somewhat pathetic. " If the way which I have pointed 
out as leading to this result seems exceedingly hard, 
it may, nevertheless, be discovered. Needs must it be 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 241 

hard, since it is so seldom found. How would it be 
possible, if salvation were ready to our hand and could 
without great labour be found, that it should be by 
almost all men neglected ? But all things excellent are 
as difficult as they are rare" (Elwes, pp. 270, 271). He 
has not made it easy for the reader of his philosophy. 
His geometric method has made the communication of his 
thought to the reader difficult, and the machinery resists 
the communion of author with reader. Much is to be 
learned of him. Even his doctrine of God has in it 
elements of value for theists. His account of the emo- 
tions has permanent worth, and his remark that only 
by emotion can we control emotion is of the highest 
value, though he seems, in his zeal for the dominance 
of knowledge, to forget the place of emotion in life. 
Yet this is recognised again in his doctrine of the 
intellectual love of God, however inconsistently he may 
have brought it in. But the main difficulty in the 
acceptance of his teaching, from an ethical point of 
view, is that it is an ethic for philosophers alone. It 
neglects the common man, it provides no way of 
making him a man worth saving. The practical 
problem of life, — how to make bad men good men, 
how to make the selfish unselfish, may be solved by 
him, but the solution is on a plane out of the sight 
of the common man. 

Except in the parts which deal with the emotions 
it cannot be said that the system of Spinoza is an 
interpretation of experience. The way in which he 
rules out moral ideals from the scheme of things, the 
way, too, in which he distinguishes between intellect 
in man and in God, and yet continues to use the words 
as if we could attach a definite meaning to the idea of 
16 



242 THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

infinite intellect, makes it impossible for us to know 
whether he has a meaning. Still further, his attempt 
to get rid of anthropomorphism must be called a failure, 
for his limitation of the attributes of God to Thought 
and Extension is simply anthropomorphic, for these 
are only human attributes magnified beyond measure, 
and they are as anthropomorphic as ethical ideas are. 
Still, after all drawbacks, Spinoza must be reckoned 
among the great thinkers of humanity. He had a 
message for man, and by life and speech he gave his 
message, and it is our business to take from it as 
much as we find possible for us in these days of ours. 



INDEX 



Adolphtjs, Gustavus, 35. 
Analysis, 41, 42, 44. 
Anselm, 75, 81. 
Arabian Philosophy, 11. 
Arguments for the Being of God, 

75 et seq. 
Aristotle, 11, 180. 
Augustine, 3, 8, 9. 
Authority, 4, 12. 
Axiom, 65, 66, 170 passim. 

Bacon, 138, 141, 142. 

Beeckmann, 25, 31. 

Being, Spinoza's four Kinds of, 173. 

Berkeley, 51, 54. 

Boyle, 143. 

Bradley, 54. 

Brahe, Tycho de, 16. 

Bruno, 137. 

Burgh, Albert, 140. 

Causality, 70, 71, 73, 76, 163 

passim. 
Causes, Final, 87, 190 et seq., 200, 

201. 
Christina, Queen of Sweden, 35. 
Church, 2-6, 8, 9, 31. 
Circulation of the Blood, 94, 97. 
Cogito, ergo sum, 47, 49, 50, 56, 

57, 64, 148 passim. 
Colerus, 144, 145. 
Conalus sese conservandi, 225-228 

et seq. 
Consequent, Reason and, 89, 90, 

164 passim. 



Conservation of Energy, 114, 122. 
Conservation of Matter, 114. 
Copernican System, 18. 
Copernicus, 16. 
Cordemoy, 130. 
Cosmos, 34. 
Creed, 7. 
Crusades, 15. 

Darwin, 107. 

Descartes, his Problem, 8 ; his 
Family, 22 ; his Birth, 22 ; his 
Education, 23, 24 ; his Wander- 
ings, 25 ; Residence at Breda, 26 ; 
his Friends, 28 ; Residence in 
Holland, 29 ; his Visit to Sweden, 
35 ; his Death, 36 ; his Method, 
38 passim ; Cogito, ergo sum, and 
the use of it by Descartes, 56 et 
seq. ; his Statement of the Argu- 
ment of the Existence of God, 76 
et seq. ; his Doctrine of Mechan- 
ism, 92 ; his Treatment of Final 
Causes, 87 ; his physical Philo- 
sophy, 111 et seq. 

Determinism, 201 passim. 

De Witt, 145. 

Dorner, 148. 

Du Bois-Reymond, 106. 

Edward, Jonathan, 144. 
Effect, Cause and, 76 imssim. 
Elector Palatine, 144. 
Empiricism, 53. 
Entia rationis, 177. 



243 



244 



INDEX 



Error, Descartes' idea of, 83 ; 

Spinoza's idea of, 177 et seq. 
Evolution, 118. 

Faith and Knowledge, 18. 

Fichte, 54. 

Fischer, Kuno, 18, 32, 45. 

Galileo, 18, 31, 93. 

Geography, 15. 

Geometry, 41. 

Geulincx, 130. 

God, Argument for the Existence 

of, Descartes', 62, 81 ; Spinoza's, 

169, 188. 
Goethe, 148. 
Good, 229 et seq. 
Good and Evil, 177. 
Greek Culture, 13. 

Hamilton, 78. 
Hegel, 54. 
Herz, 209. 
Hildebrandism, 9. 
Hobbes, 138. 
Humanism, 19. 
Hume, 51, 53, 161. 
Huxley, 95, 97, 106, 125. 

Immortality, 238, 239. 
Induction, 44. 
Innate Ideas, 56. 
Intellectual Love of God, 236. 

Jacquier, 32. 

Jesuit Editors of Newton's Prin- 

cipia, 32, 33. 
Joel, 37. 

Kant, 17, 44, 54, 92, 125, 209-211. 
Kelvin, 124. 
Kepler, 17. 

Knowledge, Spinoza's three Kinds 
of, 217. 

Laplace, 125. 
Leibniz, 54, 122, 145. 
Le Seur, 32. 
Lessing, 148. 
Locke, 54. 



Lumen naturale, 67. 
Lyell, 122. 

Maimonides, 133. 
Malebranche, 131. 
Mansel, 78. 

Mathematics, 38, 40, 41. 
Maxwell, Clerk, 212. 
Mechanism, 111 et seq. 
Mersenne, 31. 

Method, Rules of, 38, 49, 149. 
Middle Ages, 1, 2, 8, 9. 
Motion, Laws of, 112. 
Mysticism, 9, 10, 134. 

Natuka naturans and Natv.ra 

naturata, 197. 
Newton, 16, 32, 61, 113, 119, 

122. 
Nominalism, 10. 

Occasionalism, 130 passim. 
Oldenburg, 141, 143. 
Organism, 108, 109. 

,, and Environment, 108. 

PHILO-JUDiETJS, 133. 
Pleasure and Pain, 226 et seq. 
Pollock, Sir Frederick, 146. 
Polo, Marco, 15. 
Polytheism, 5. 
Ptolemy, 16. 

Realism, 10. 

Reality, Objective, 114. 

Reformation, 12, 19, 20. 

Renaissance, 12-15, 20, 134. 

Repentance, 227. 

Romanist, 34. 

Royal Society, 143. 

St. Paul, 182. 
Schiller, 148. 
Schleiermacher, 132, 148. 
Schopenhauer, 54. 
Scholasticism, 7, 11. 
Scholastic System, 21. 
Self-consciousness, 43, 49, 86. 
Self-determination, 85. 
Spencer, Herbert, 54, 78, 118. 



INDEX 



245 



Spinoza, a Jew, 130 ; his Birth, 
136 ; his Education, 137 ; Rup- 
ture with the Synagogue, 138 ; 
Residence atRhynsburg, 140 ; at 
Amsterdam, 141 ; Preparation of 
his Works, 143 ; Offer of a Pro- 
fessorship, 144 ; his Manner of 
Life, 145, 146 ; his Death, 148 ; 
De Intellectus Emendatione, 149 
et seq.; Exposition of the Car- 
tesian Philosophy and the Cogi- 
tatio Metaphysica, 167 et seq.; 
the Ethics, the First and Second 
Books, 187 et seq. ; the last 
Three Books, 205 et seq. 

Substance, 72 et passim. 



Sub specie seternitatis, 236-238 et 

passim. 
Synthesis, 42. 

Tait, Professor, 113-116. 
Teleology, Descartes', 107. 
Theology, 2. 

,, Greek, 2. 

,, Latin, 2. 

Understanding, Spinoza's Pro- 
perties of, 221, 225 et seq. 

Van Vloten, 159. 

Ward, Dr. James, 109, 110, 204. 



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